A foundation to oversee the competitive process to select President Barack Obama’s library and museum was launched Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
A site could be selected as soon as 2015. Contenders are said to include land in Hawaii, the tropical paradise of the president’s boyhood, and Chicago, where he came of age politically.
Obama’s close friend, Martin Nesbitt, will oversee the effort, along with two other associates of the president, the report says. Incorporation papers for the newly created Barack H. Obama Foundation were filed Friday in Washington, D.C.
“We have no preconceived idea about what these proposals will look like,” Nesbitt told the Sun-Times. “We want to create a blank canvass, create sort of a white canvas with some guiding principles that allow people to respond in a thoughtful and creative way and we will evaluate them when they come in.”
Nesbitt, a Chicagoan, is co-CEO of The Vistria Group and treasurer of Obama’s two White House campaigns. The foundation is also led by Julianna Smoot, a co-chair of the 2012 re-election bid and the 2008 National Finance Director and J. Kevin Poorman, the Wilmette businessman who took over several companies run by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker when she stepped down to join Obama’s cabinet, the Sun-Times says.
Read more at the Chicago Sun-Times.