If it ain’t woke, don’t build it: Hideous monument to 44th president plagued by delays, cost overruns, and racial quotas
Barack Obama’s long-delayed and aesthetically monstrous presidential center in Chicago could face even further delays after a local subcontractor filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against one of the firms managing construction on the project.
The lawsuit, filed last month in federal court by the Chicago-based concrete and rebar firm II in One, accused Thornton Tomasetti, the New York-based company overseeing structural engineering and design on the Obama Presidential Center, of imposing “excessively rigorous and unnecessary” inspection standards and engaging in racial discrimination by singling out the black-owned firm for errors resulting in “extreme financial loss and reputational hardship.”
Robert McGee, owner of II in One, is seeking to recoup roughly $41 million in additional costs his firm allegedly incurred as a result of Thornton Tomasetti’s discriminatory actions, which “directly undermined the Obama Foundation’s DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) goals and commitments and mission to bring transformative change to the construction industry and local community,” according to the lawsuit. The company was now “on the brink of forced closure because of racial discrimination by the structural engineer.”
Thornton Tomasetti has strenuously denied the allegations, writing in a 2024 memo to Obama Foundation executives that the cost overruns and delays “were all unequivocally driven by the underperformance and inexperience … [of] what everyone knows was a questionably qualified subcontractor team.” The memo also included images of cracked slab and exposed rebar from the construction site. “We cannot stand by while contractors attempt to blame their own shortcomings on the design team,” the firm wrote. Obama Foundation spokeswoman Emily Bittner, who previously worked as a senior adviser to Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D., Ill.), told the Chicago Tribune that the foundation had “no reason to believe that Thornton Tomasetti acted with racist intent.”
The lawsuit is the latest of many setbacks for the Obama Presidential Center, which didn’t even break ground until 2021 due to lengthy reviews to assess the environmental impact and other “social justice” concerns. The center, located on a sprawling 20-acre campus in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago, has been a source of controversy in the local community since its conception. In 2018, more than 150 faculty members at the nearby University of Chicago wrote an open letter echoing concerns from community activists that the center would be a “socially regressive” “intrusion” that “will not provide the promised development or economic benefit” to surrounding neighborhoods, with many local residents likely to be priced out due to gentrification. Environmentalists have complained that the project would remove too many trees and destroy bird habitats.
The Washington Free Beacon visited the partially finished site of the Obama center during the 2024 Democratic convention, and gazed upon the hideous 225-foot “museum tower” that dominates the landscape. The brutalist eyesore resembles the extravagant tomb of a tinpot dictator, a structure that would be on the short list for demolition by anti-regime forces after a popular uprising. Large portions of the tower will eventually be engraved with the words from one of Obama’s speeches so that all may marvel at his eloquence. The complex is supposed to open in 2026, nearly a decade after Obama left office. Presidential libraries for Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush were all completed in less than five years. It is a prime example of what New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has described as “liberalism’s failure to build” by creating a “Kafka-esque system of legal and bureaucratic hoops and delays.”
Obama, for example, has insisted that project managers overseeing construction of the center abide by an array of gender and racial quotas, as well as ambitious environmental goals that contributed to the extensive delays. Last year, the consortium of firms leading the project published a “community impact” report that included bizarre pie charts with titles such as, “Workforce Hours Summary by Race.” According to the report, African Americans account for 35.6 percent of total workforce hours, compared to 32.2 percent for Caucasians, and 0.3 percent for Asians. The report also explained how the project is working to ensure that 50 percent of the work is done by businesses owned by “minorities, women, veterans, people with disabilities or people who identify as LGBTQ+.”
As a result, the total cost of the Obama center has soared from $500 million to $800 million. But the extensive delays and exorbitant price tag aren’t the only reasons why Obama’s monument to himself will be unique compared with other presidential libraries. It won’t even have a research library or presidential archive overseen by the National Archives and Records Administration. Obama’s foundation will run the complex, which will feature a museum celebrating his life, a fitness center, recording studio, playground, teaching kitchen, and a sledding hill. There’s even a woke farmer’s market across the street, although judging by the poster we saw defacing a banner advertising the market, members of the community are less than thrilled.
