Obama Presidential Library Costs Balloon to $850 Million considered an eyesore by Chicago residents
Appear that someone has delusions of grandeur.
America's first black president is building America's most expensive, opulent, and expansive presidential library.
It should be noted that all presidential libraries are built using donations from individuals and corporations. The Barack Obama Center was originally going to cost $300 million. However, by the time the design was unveiled in 2017, the estimate had been revised to $500 million.
The Obama Foundation, which is building the Center, was just getting started.
In 2021, construction costs ballooned to $700 million alone. Another $90 million for artifact preparation and $40 million for the first-year operating budget bring the total to a smooth $830 million. Foundation spokeswoman Emily Bittner said the most recent all-in estimate is $850 million.
Chicago Tribune:
After years of delays and legal fights, the center is scheduled to open its doors to visitors in the spring. Obama officials are hosting community tours beginning late this month so neighbors “can begin to imagine how they will use and enjoy” the center.
Former President Barack Obama isn’t making any new fans with his $830 million presidential library project on the South Side of Chicago.
Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, who represents much of the majority-Black, working-class neighborhood that surrounds the Obama site, told the Daily Mail that she fears that local residents will no longer be able to afford to live in the area.
“Every time large development comes to communities, they displace the very people they say they want to improve it for. This was no different, and we’re living what is actually happening,” said Taylor, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. “We’re going to see rents go higher and we’re going to see families displaced.”
When finished, the campus will include the main building housing the museum; a forum building that includes an auditorium, media suite and other programming rooms; a Chicago Public Library branch; and farther south, a 45,000 square foot multipurpose athletic center.
That athletic center was supposed to open later this year, but foundation officials revised the opening date to 2026 earlier this summer. “We are planning to fully open the campus as a whole in the spring of 2026,” Bittner said. By comparison, the Ronald Reagan Library cost $40 million in 1991, which is about $95 million today.
The Bill Clinton Library cost $165 million in 2004 dollars, about $283 million in today's currency.
Obama's Caesar-like vision of his own greatness was under pressure from the start by civil rights hustlers and racialists demanding that the project hire workers on the city’s South and West sides, according to the Obama Foundation report. About half the workers are from Chicago, with another 35% from the majority minority wards of the city's South and West sides.
