CHICAGO, June 14 (Our Illinois Times) — The Obama Foundation is facing new questions over the financial safety net for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago as subcontractors say they are owed large sums for work on the project.
The issue centers on an endowment the foundation said would help sustain the center and its operations. In its 2020 annual report, the foundation said, “$470M of our fundraising goal will go toward seeding an endowment that will sustain Obama Foundation activities and the operations of the OPC for generations to come.”
But Fox News, citing the foundation’s public filings, reported that the foundation deposited $1 million into the endowment in 2021 and that the balance remained largely unchanged in the most recent publicly available filings described in its reporting.
The foundation has said it is complying with its agreement with the city of Chicago. According to descriptions of the city agreement cited in the reporting, the deal required the creation of an endowment but did not set a required dollar amount. The same agreement gave the foundation control of a 19.3-acre section of Jackson Park for 99 years in exchange for a one-time payment of $10.
The foundation said the project itself is funded. “On the eve of our Grand Opening celebrations, we are pleased to reiterate that the Obama Presidential Center is fully funded with generous private contributions,” the foundation said in a statement quoted by Fox News. The foundation also said it plans to make “significant investments” in the endowment in coming years.
The endowment questions now overlap with payment disputes involving firms that worked on the center. Mike Owen, president and owner of Adamson Plumbing, told Fox News that his company was still owed nearly $4 million for work performed on the project. Fox reported that Owen provided company spreadsheets and tied the losses to rework, delays and more than 100 change-order requests.
“It’s still sitting at the $1 million mark [where it stood] when they opened it up,” Owen told Fox News, referring to the endowment.
Omar Shareef, president of the African American Contractors Association, told Fox News that several Black-owned contractors were in financial difficulty because of the project. The materials reviewed for this article did not include court filings, lien records or full contract documents that would establish the exact status of each payment dispute. They also did not provide a total amount allegedly owed across all subcontractors.
The foundation’s broader finances show a project whose cost has grown sharply, according to filings described in national reporting. Fox News reported that the center’s construction cost rose from an original estimate of $330 million to at least $850 million, citing the foundation’s 2024 tax filings. Fox also reported that the foundation had spent more than $615 million building the center as of the latest cited records.
At the end of 2024, the foundation reported $116.5 million in cash, down nearly $80 million from the prior year, while still owing about $234 million in construction costs, according to Fox’s characterization of the foundation’s latest tax return. The same reporting said the remaining funding picture included $216 million in firm pledges and $201 million in conditional pledges. Fox also reported that the foundation had a $250 million revolving credit facility that had not been used but carried annual fees.
The foundation has also estimated large operating costs once the center opens. According to 2021 foundation documents cited in the reporting, first-year operating costs could reach about $40 million.
The public cost of infrastructure around the site has also increased. The Illinois Department of Transportation told Fox News that about $229 million in infrastructure spending was tied to the site, up from an earlier estimate of roughly $174 million. Fox also reported that Chicago officials had not produced a reconciled total showing how much city taxpayers had committed or how current spending compared with the roughly $175 million discussed when the project was approved.
The center is being built on public parkland in Jackson Park under the long-term city agreement. The evidence reviewed so far shows two separate financial questions: whether the foundation is meeting the legal terms of its city deal, and whether the much larger $470 million endowment figure described in the foundation’s own annual report has been funded at a level that matches the expectations set during public discussion of the project.
On the first question, the foundation says it is in compliance because the city agreement required an endowment but did not specify a dollar target. On the second, the foundation’s 2020 annual report identified $470 million for the endowment, while public filings described by Fox News show $1 million deposited and little change since then.
