Barack Obama’s Presidential Center, a project that already cost local taxpayers millions of dollars, has hit local Chicago businesses hard.
Including companies that worked to build the former president’s massive library.
In an exclusive sit-down with Fox News, a subcontractor who previously claimed his company was unpaid for nearly $4 million worth of work has shut down operations and laid off 25 union workers.
Mike Owen, the owner of Chicago-based Adamson Plumbing Contractors, told Fox News that the financial fallout forced the company to abandon about half a dozen other construction jobs and left it on the verge of collapse.
Owen described the shutdown as a painful decision he believed was necessary to save the company from bankruptcy.
“Laying off close to 30 people is something that no owner in our industry wants to do,” Owen said.
“It’s a hard thing to do, especially when you know you can finish them and the company can still make money. But we were put in a pretty bad corner.”
Adamson, which performed its work on the center under the name Marsh-Adamson, has since filed a $1.72 million mechanic’s lien against the property, escalating the payment dispute into a legal fight.
Adamson’s company is one of several subcontractors to report financial trouble after working on the center, which was promoted as a transformative economic opportunity for small and minority-owned businesses.
A previous Fox report identified several other Chicago-area subcontractors — including Black-owned firms the project was specifically intended to support — that said they were owed money or had absorbed losses ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions.
The largest dispute involves the Concrete Collective, which is seeking more than $40 million in additional payment.
Prior to the Obama library opening, Owen said the project had left his company with $3.9 million in losses tied to delays, rework, labor overruns and changing project demands.
He said he spent months negotiating with Lakeside Alliance, the project’s construction manager, before going public after failing to reach a resolution.
Owen said the breaking point came around the time of the Obama Presidential Center’s opening celebration.
Owen said Adamson and Lakeside Alliance reached an agreement under which Adamson would provide two journeyman plumbers to perform last-minute “housekeeping” work on campus at premium nighttime rates.
In return, Owen said, Adamson was supposed to receive part of its outstanding payment days before the center opened on June 19. An email reviewed by Fox News Digital shows a Lakeside representative telling Owen that $100,000 would be released through Adamson’s May payment application, according to the report.
Adamson completed the requested work, but the payment did not arrive on time, according to Owen, who said it was the company’s breaking point and left him with no choice but to suspend operations on June 25.
“We negotiated it in good faith,” he said. “Against my better judgment, I agreed [to do the work].”
“Not getting that large sum of money just kind of pulled the brakes on the train. It was just the final death blow to the company,” he added. “Rather than try to stretch it out and go bankrupt, I just decided the responsible thing was to shut it down. We’ll regroup, and we’ll see where we’re at come September.”
Owen said that the promised $100,000 retainage payment and around $35,000 for change orders payments have since arrived from Lakeside Alliance. Unfortunately, it came more than two weeks after he suspended operations and laid off 25 workers.
Owen said the money helped reduce the company’s debt to one supplier but did not reverse the shutdown.
“It’s almost like too little, too late,” Owen said.
“It probably would have just prolonged the inevitable at this point,” he said. “We’re still deep in the hole of what they owe us.”