The controversial, $850 million dollar Obama Presidential Center opens Friday on Juneteenth.
The Black contractors whose hard work built the former president’s monument to himself now say Obama has refused to pay them for their labor, and some are facing bankruptcy because of it.
As Chicago prepares for the grand opening ceremony of the hideous 19.3-acre campus in Jackson Park, a Fox News investigation has revealed that multiple minority-owned contractors and subcontractors who actually built the most expensive presidential centers in American history are facing financial ruin.
Some have been forced to file for bankruptcy, and others to mortgage their homes, because Obama never paid them. Almost everyone is said they wish they’d never taken the job.
“The promise was that this project was going to uplift minority contractors and uplift the community,” said Omar Shareef, president of the African American Contractors Association. “What sense is celebrating Juneteenth if our Black contractors are not getting their money?”
Shareef says between seven and ten subcontractors have contacted his organization in recent months seeking help on unpaid invoices. Some are owed seven figures. They have told him they are willing to settle for less, they just need enough to survive.
“If they would have known it was a Trojan horse or a Pandora’s box, I don’t know if they would have raced as much as they did to be a part of it,” Shareef said.
Chicago’s Mike Owen, president of Adamson Plumbing and a a minority-business owner, told Fox News he is owed millions… and Obama hasn’t paid.
Owen says his company is nearly $4 million in the red after years of work on the project. His original 24-month contract stretched to nearly five years. He was hit with more than 100 change-order requests. When Adamson was forced to redo a section of the center’s stormwater system at a cost of nearly $900,000, Owen disputed the necessity of the redo.
“That is a hole that no subcontractor, small business can survive,” Owen told Fox News. “I haven’t had eight hours or six hours sleep in over a year. I’m cooked emotionally. I feel like an aluminum can that’s been thrown in front of a steamroller. We’re crushed. And I have to fight for my company and for my people.”
Owen is not alone. At least two other minority-owned subcontractors that worked on the center, Glass Management Services and Vision Painting & Decorating Services, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2024.
Glass Management is preparing a lawsuit against the Obama Presidential Center and claims millions in damages.
II in One Concrete, a Black-owned firm that helped pour much of the concrete for the project, has filed a $40 million lawsuit against one of the library’s project managers, alleging false claims and racial discrimination.
The Obama Foundation said that forcing minority-owned businesses into bankruptcy is not its problem.
The foundation told Fox News it contracted a company, Lakeside Alliance, and that Lakeside was responsible for stiffing the local businesses.
The foundation said it has “no outstanding disputed charges with Lakeside Alliance and no contractual relationship with Lakeside’s subcontractors.”
The controversial Obama Presidential Center was originally estimated to cost $300 million. By 2017 that estimate had risen to $500 million. After quelling local protests that the former president was forcing out minority homeowners to build his massive memorial to himself, the project finally broke ground in 2021.
By then, the cost had skyrocketed to $830 million, and the final figure may have surpassed $1 billion. The City of Chicago also spent $123.3 million in taxpayer cash to help build the site.
Meanwhile, a taxpayer protection Obama promised was never funded. In 2020, the foundation pledged to create a $470 million endowment to fund the center “for generations to come.”
Today, that endowment holds just $1 million, a balance that has hasn’t moved since 2021.
“They promised hundreds of millions of dollars for it. It’s still sitting at the $1 million mark where they opened it up. So, I don’t believe that they’ve kept that promise,” Illinois Republican Party Chair Robert Grogan told Fox News.
While contractors go bankrupt, Obama’s inside circle has been paid handsomely. Fox News reported that Obama library foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett has been paid $740,000. Executive Vice President Robin Cohen cashed in over $600,000. Chief Legal Officer Tina Chen was paid $425,000.
While Obama’s team laughs its way to the bank, local Black and minority business owners have lost everything.
“Some of the people have put their mortgages up. They’re going to lose their bonding. They are going to lose their relationship with their supplier as well as their banker. That’s a bad signal to put out — that seven to eight to maybe 10 of our contractors in our community are going to be eliminated from doing business because of the debt they incurred on this particular project,” Shareef said.
The grand opening is Friday.