Construction of former President Barack Obama’s library and museum in Chicago has triggered backlash from local residents and community leaders, who fear the $850 million “monstrosity” will accelerate gentrification, drive up rents, and displace longtime residents and their families, according to a new report.
The Obama Presidential Center is set to open in April in Jackson Park on the city’s South Side, near the University of Chicago — where the future 44th president taught law before entering politics.
Far from feeling pride in the neighborhood’s favorite son, locals are blasting the project, evem calling its design an “eyesore.”
“It looks like this big piece of rock that just landed here out of nowhere in what used to be a really nice landscape of trees and flowers,” Ken Woodward, a lawyer and father of six who grew up in the area, told the Daily Mail.
“It’s a monstrosity. It’s over budget, it’s taking way too long to finish and it’s going to drive up prices and bring headaches and problems for everyone who lives here. It feels like a washing away of the neighborhood and culture that used to be here.”
The Obama Center – which has faced years of delays and lawsuits since breaking ground in September 2021 – will cover nearly 20 acres of the 540-acre Jackson Park and feature a museum, public library branch, athletic center, gardens and children’s play area.
While the privately funded project’s price tag has ballooned from its original $500 million budget, residents said they’ve also seen rents and property taxes skyrocket as construction nears competition.
“Rents are going up fast,” Kyana Butler of Southside Together, one of at least three local activist groups that lobbied the Obama Foundation to better integrate the project into the surrounding neighborhood, told the Daily Mail.
“A two-bedroom apartment that used to rent for $800 a month has already jumped to $1,800. Property taxes are going up so much that the owner of my building is saying she might just walk away.
“I don’t blame President Obama for all this, but the people on his team may not have the best intentions for people in this area. We’re all worried about the impact on the community.”
Butler argued that the center, which will also house Obama’s eponymous foundation, could have been built on a smaller scale and for far less money.
“We’re going to see rents go high and we’re going to see families displaced,” said Chicago Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, who represents much of the working-class neighborhood surrounding the site.
“Every time large developments come 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. The city of Chicago should have done a Community Benefits Agreement before the first shovel went into the ground.”
Obama has previously insisted the center won’t force residents out, assuring it will bring jobs and economic growth, as well as safeguard affordable housing.
While the center is expected to attract 750,000 visitors a year once it opens, critics have slammed it as nothing more than a vanity project.
“This is a monument to one man’s ego. You know Obama had to approve it,” Steve Cortes, a long time Chicagoan and former advisor to President Trump, told the Mail.
“Look at the Reagan Library [in Simi Valley, Calif.]. It’s beautiful. This? There are almost no windows. What are they hiding? And this Brutalist cement look in a city known for its incredible architecture. Why?”
The Obama Foundation declined to address residents’ concerns to the outlet, instead touting the new centers as a “tremendous” global destination in a general statement.
“We’re proud that members of the community played key roles in building the center, and we are looking forward to hiring local residents for hundreds of good jobs when the Center opens,” the statement read.
