Barack and Michelle Obama spent a decade building their monument to themselves on Chicago's South Side.
Now that monument is engulfed in scandal and every promise they made about it is unraveling at once.
The people they promised to help are the ones exposing it.
Obama Library Minority Contractor Lost His Business and Hasn't Been Paid
Mike Owen built Adamson Plumbing into exactly the kind of small Hispanic-owned company Obama spent a decade promising his presidential centere would lift up.
He spent years pouring that company's labor into Obama's presidential center under a contract that eventually swelled beyond $9 million.
The payments stopped near the end – Owen says he is still owed $1.7 million for materials he paid for upfront and work his crew completed.
He shut down Adamson Plumbing, laid off 25 union workers, and is now looking for a job himself.
"I'm living off my tax return, and I'm looking for work," Owen told the Daily Mail.
Before he shut down, Owen kept going back to Turner Construction and Lakeside Alliance – the contractor teams overseeing the project – with the same question: when was Adamson getting paid?
They had one answer: "It's in process."
It was never in process.
Omar Shareef has led the African American Contractors Association since 1989.
About four or five companies came to him directly, warning they were at risk of going under because Obama's team had not paid them.
Some had signed nondisclosure agreements and were too frightened to go public.
"They ain't paying them. They're crushing them," Shareef said.
Obama sold this project as an economic engine for black-owned businesses on Chicago's South Side.
"They missed the mark," Shareef told the Daily Mail.
"It's a disgrace."
Obama Presidential Center Cost Overruns Now Total Over One Billion Dollars
The Obama Presidential Center was pitched as a $300 million to $350 million project that would open in 2021.
It opened in June 2026 – five years late.
The Obama Foundation's own audited financial statements show construction costs hit $908.9 million by the end of 2025, with another $109 million in outstanding commitments.
That puts the combined total above $1 billion – more than triple the original estimate and the most expensive presidential center in American history.
Costs jumped more than $293 million in 2025 alone.
The foundation's endowment – the fund meant to sustain long-term operations – stood at just $14.2 million.
Richard Epstein is the University of Chicago legal scholar who took the project to court.
"Everything about this project has been done on fumes," Epstein told the Daily Mail.
"The reason they can't pay the contracts is they don't have the money in the till."
Obama secured 19.3 acres of Chicago's Jackson Park – public land – for a one-time payment of $10 under a 99-year lease.
The monument that sits on that land – funded by Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey and George Soros – does not contain a single original presidential record.
Those are in Maryland with the National Archives.
Steve Cortes made a documentary about the center before working as a Trump adviser.
"Minority contractors not getting paid is outrageous," Cortes told the Daily Mail.
"It's contrary to everything that the Obama Foundation claims to be."
Obama Foundation Workers Launch Union Drive Over Frozen Pay and Rising Costs
In 2016, Barack Obama told a crowd: "If I were looking for a good job, I'd join a union."
More than 250 of his own employees just took him up on that.
Workers at the Obama Foundation and Presidential Center launched a formal union campaign in October, filing with AFSCME Council 31.
They cited frozen pay, rising healthcare costs and crushing workloads.
Obama built his political career on union solidarity, but his own staff says they have no seat at the table.
Dan Proft, a Chicago conservative radio host who covered the project through its opening, told the Daily Mail how it ended for the people Obama promised it would help.
"The net result is that a bunch of people who did a bunch of work – disproportionately, minority contractors – have been destroyed," Proft said.
The Obama Presidential Center played out exactly like his presidency – years of soaring promises and carefully staged hype before anyone turned a single shovel of dirt, followed by a billion-dollar disaster that delivered for a handful of insiders and left everyone else holding the bill.
The insiders got theirs — Bezos, Soros and Oprah got the photo op, Bono got a stage, and Obama walked away with prime Chicago parkland for ten dollars.
The Hispanic plumber who helped build that monument is applying for jobs, and the Black contractors he spent years promising to help have been crushed.
His own employees are organizing against him to get their benefits back.
That is his legacy on the South Side.
Sources:
- Dana Kennedy, "Obama's eyesore library in crisis as black and Hispanic builders accuse former President of multi-million-dollar betrayal," Daily Mail, October 30, 2026.
- Michael Dorgan, "Obama Center subcontractor shuts down amid $4M fight, lays off 25," Fox News, July 23, 2026.
- Michael Dorgan, "Obama Presidential Center subcontractors file fresh payment claims totaling nearly $900K," Fox News, July 25, 2026.
- Emily Hallas, "Obama presidential center's costs balloon to $1 billion after initial $300 million estimate," Washington Examiner, October 15, 2026.
- "Obama's billion-dollar baby: Chicago center's price tag hits monumental milestone, tripling original estimate," Fox News, October 15, 2026.
- "Report: Obama Presidential Center Subcontractor Forced to Shut Down over $4M Nonpayment Dispute," Breitbart, July 23, 2026.
- Ben Smith, "Obama Gets His $1 Billion Monument. Contractors Are Still Waiting to Get Paid," RedState, October 17, 2026.