The Obama Presidential Center has spent a decade on the drawing board and under construction — two years longer than its namesake’s time in the White House.
But now the team of workers, erectors, fabricators and artisans are months away from completing the $800 million center that’s expected to open next spring.
I toured the site with one of its two lead architects, Billie Tsien, of New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.
My full critique of the complex will have to wait until the project is done. But enough work has been completed to get a solid look at what will be the most expensive presidential center in U.S. history. Construction costs come to $620 million. The current leader, the George W. Bush Presidential Library, cost $327 million to build, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Announced in 2015, the center was supposed to open in 2021. But lawsuits and federal reviews — triggered when the Obama Foundation decided to build the center in National Register-listed Jackson Park, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted — contributed to the delays.
But now the team of workers, erectors, fabricators and artisans are months away from completing the $800 million center that’s expected to open next spring.