The push to build a center in Honolulu honoring President Barack Obama has percolated mainly at the University of Hawaii, which is leading the bid.

But now that UH has been selected officially as one of four universities to compete for the library, it is time for the entire state to rally around an effort that will share with the world the story of a multicultural island community that shaped this historic leader.

Obama’s path to becoming the United States’ first African-American president began in Honolulu and that is where the galvanizing example of his early life, education and later forays into community organizing and elected office should be fully told — in a cosmopolitan city at the crossroads of the Pacific, which, like the biracial president himself, represents America’s future.

Archiving Obama’s presidential papers and building a museum here to document his legacy would boost not only the University of Hawaii and other educational institutions whose faculty and students would utilize the facility, but also offer Oahu’s millions of tourists another major cultural attraction and positively transform the 8-acre site proposed for construction in Kakaako Makai.

Therefore, rather than being viewed through a purely political lens as a paean to Obama, who has plenty of detractors, even here in his home state, this project must be considered a potential economic engine, capable of creating jobs in the short and long terms and of enhancing a relatively rundown stretch of property near the UH Cancer Center, medical school and the Children’s Discovery Center.

Preserving mauka-makai views and expanding public use of this area would be an improvement, much preferable to other types of development proposed in recent years near Kakaako Waterfront Park.

Proper use of the site is crucial to gain the public’s support, which, in turn, is crucial to the viability of the project moving forward.

Organizers are correctly careful to emphasize that a future presidential center at this site would not hinder access to the ocean. The proposed site boundaries are set back from the shoreline, which would remain under state control.

More than the ocean must remain accessible, however; the outdoor areas of the facility itself must be broadly available to the public, inviting visitors to explore the grounds and enjoy the year-round sunshine that is an attractive element of Hawaii’s bid.

The other three universities still in the running, out of the original 13, are Columbia University in New York, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The president has lasting ties to those places as well, of course, but all were formed in adulthood, after Obama had grown up and left the island of his birth.

University of Hawaii officials, with the backing of state and city elected officials and an array of business and community leaders, have three months to submit a formal bid to host the Obama Presidential Library, which would be funded largely through hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations raised by the Barack Obama Foundation. 

President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will make the site decision in early 2015.

All along, officials here have been willing to partner with New York or Chicago institutions as part of a multistate complex. That wise strategy likely helped the state reach the final four.

Whether Honolulu is chosen as the main repository for Obama’s records and artifacts, or as the site of a satellite presidential center, there is no doubt that Hawaii’s influence on the nation’s 44th president looms large.