A Hawaii group is lobbying for the future President Barack Obama library to be built in the state where he was born.
Officials say the large number of tourists in the state each year would make it ideal for the location of the library, predicting that because of that, the library would be one of the most-visited presidential libraries in the United States, according to an Associated Press report.
The proposed location would be on the waterfront between Waikiki and downtown Honolulu, and includes designs from four different architect teams. Some of the designs would take advantage of the cool trade winds that flow through the state and use large, covered open spaces. Another would use solar power, taking advantage of the sunshine the state is famous for.
Still others include food gardens in tribute to First Lady Michelle Obama’s White House vegetable garden.
Chicago and New York are also competing for the right to construct the library. Chicago certainly holds a place dear to Obama’s heart as the city where his rise to political power began.
However, it was in 1961 at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu where Obama began his life as the son of a Kansas woman and Kenyan man, who met at a Russian class in the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The presidential library system is a nationwide network that currently includes 13 libraries, featuring papers, records, collections, and other materials from every president since Herbert Hoover, who served from 1929-1933. They are sanctioned and maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
