Golf carts buzzed across Jackson Park on Thursday morning, ferrying many of Chicago’s most prominent guests to the opening celebration of the Obama Presidential Center. Dressed in elegant suits and eye-catching Derby-style hats, attendees arrived in style for the long-anticipated event.
“We’re here for hope!” one woman shouted from behind oversized sunglasses as her cart rolled by and she waved at onlookers. “Hope is back!”
An event hosted by Barack and Michelle Obama was never expected to be understated, and Thursday’s celebration delivered on that expectation.
The guest list featured a striking mix of political leaders and music icons. Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson and Christina Aguilera joined Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, along with Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau and Kamala Harris, to watch Obama officially open the $850 million, 225-foot landmark that has been more than 10 years in the making.
Holding back tears, Barack Obama told the audience: “Despite all of our differences, we can see each other and understand one another and make common cause together. That’s what I hope every visitor to this center takes away from their experience.”
Michelle Obama also spoke about the country’s enduring potential, saying: “I hope this place can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that has always powered this country’s greatest change.”
In the park across the road, thousands more gathered for the official watch party, with the celebrations broadcast on giant screens. They had flocked to Chicago from as far afield as California and Brazil to a party held under a typically lofty banner: ‘Hope has a home, and it’s time to open the doors.’
Yet despite the elation within the campus confines, outside, the feelings of hope and joy were far from universal.
Barack Obama spoke to the crowd at the opening party for the Obama Presidential Center
The $850 million shrine in Chicago has been a decade in the making
The Obama’s big bash was never going to be a low-key affair
Joe and Jill Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, George W and Laura Bush and Bill and Hillary Clinton gathered ahead of the dedication ceremony
The star-studded ceremony featured performances from the likes of Bono
The design itself is not without controversy. Dubbed the ‘Obamalisk’, comparisons have included a mausoleum, a ‘giant trash can’ and even the Death Star.
From the moment the site was chosen, protests sprang up against the development of Jackson Park – designed in 1869 by the man behind New York’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, and site of the 1893 World’s Fair.
Locals also worried about displacement and gentrification – fears which, many told the Daily Mail, are already proving justified.
Obama, himself a former community activist, brushed aside such concerns in a 2018 community meeting, declaring: ‘We’ve got such a long way to go in terms of economic development before you’re even going to start seeing the prospect of significant gentrification. Malia’s kids might have to worry about that.’
But that breezy dismissal is now offensive to Kenneth Woodard, a 40-year-old product designer, born and raised on the South Side.
Woodard has been forced to move, thanks – he believes – to a building he calls ‘a monstrosity.’
‘I was living three blocks away from the presidential center,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘Prices went up by a crazy level, so I decided to move out – that was literally three weeks ago.
‘There’s more people wanting to move close to the Obama Center, and so the rent companies know they can capture that. All of a sudden you’re going from the $2,400 mark to $2,700-plus. For what benefit? To be next to the Obama Center? Yeah, no thanks.’
Darren Bailey, a former member of the state House and Senate, chosen as the Republican challenger to Governor JB Pritzker in November’s election, said they saw the crisis coming.
‘There was concern several years ago that Illinois is in dire need of affordable housing, and this presidential center would infringe upon that,’ he said, sitting in a cafe overlooking Jackson Park. ‘We were assured in the Illinois general assembly that that wouldn’t happen. But what do you think’s happening right now?
‘As the center’s gone up, rents have increased, and there are already stories of people being forced out. In some cases rents have gone up by $500 a month, so a lot of families are being displaced.
‘I’m frustrated because as a state representative and state senator, we were assured that none of this was going to happen. And now we’re witnessing it.’
The $850 million price tag makes Obama’s 20-acre site by far the most extravagant of the 14 presidential libraries opened since 1941, when Franklin D Roosevelt began the tradition.
The last such presidential monument to open its doors – George W Bush’s Dallas project, inaugurated in 2013 – cost just over half as much. Bill Clinton’s 2004 building, in the Arkansas city of Little Rock, came in at a mere $165 million.
The Obamas’ site is entirely funded by private donations – Jeff Bezos gave $100 million, with film mogul Tyler Perry and entrepreneur Mark Cuban also among the biggest donors.
But Bailey said he was concerned about the infrastructure costs to the surrounding area, which came from taxpayers’ money.
He said there was a lack of transparency about the project, with many in the city blinded by the star power of their beloved son.
Bailey also noted that some of the contractors, many of them black, claimed that they were yet to be paid. The Obama Foundation said in response that it paid an umbrella consortium of construction firms, Lakeside Alliance, and had no outstanding bills nor any relationship with Lakeside’s subcontractors.
Malia and Sasha Obama exuded confidence as they took to the stage in Chicago
Gayle King and Oprah Winfrey chatted with California Governor Gavin Newsom as they arrived
Biden looked bewildered at Obama library’s opening
The project was political from the start, of course: a celebration of two terms and a permanent reminder of the Obamas’ priorities.
Visitors to the center on Friday – it opens its doors to the public on Juneteenth – will be able to snap a photo in a replica of the Oval Office; attend a ‘Sports and Play Clinic’ with the Chicago Blackhawks, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Stars FC and Chicago White Sox; and explore Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden.
Banners promote the site as a home for creativity, action, play, growth, connection and inspiration. There are rotating displays of modern art and a sledding site for the winter. Venues can be hired for community events and local people are encouraged to see the site as their back yard.
Obama’s is the first not to be officially classed as a library, owing to an unprecedented move to digitize the official records held by NARA, the national archive, rather than store them on site. There will, however, be a branch of the Chicago public library.
The venture is also incredibly personal: the site sits two miles north of Michelle’s childhood home in the still-deprived district of South Shore and the same distance from the lakefront site of their 1992 wedding reception. It is two miles south of the $1.65 million home the Obamas bought in 2005, which they still own to this day.
‘Michelle and I are thrilled that the Obama Presidential Center will be developed in the heart of Chicago’s South Side, a community we call home and that means the world to us,’ said Obama in July 2016, announcing the decision to build in Jackson Park.
‘Not only will we be able to affect local change, but we can attract the world to this historic neighborhood,’ he declared, adding: ‘We are proud that the center will help spur development in an urban area and we can’t wait to forge new ways to give back to the people of Chicago who have given us so much.’
On Thursday, Chicagoans were out in force to celebrate the opening.
Seventy-seven-year-old Sheila Clay sat with a heart-shaped USA balloon attached to her lawn chair, showing off a laminated photo of her and Obama from 1992, when he was a South Side community organizer.
‘It’s been a journey for me,’ she said. ‘And to be among our neighbors once again, who supported him and voted for him – it’s a full-circle moment.’
Marlene Snipes, 57, was leading a conga line at the front of the giant screen.
‘Barack Obama is our rock and we love him!’ she yelled above the pumping party soundtrack. ‘It’s building on his legacy of positivity, and I love it.’
Andre Owens, 39, was twerking and salsa dancing, beaming with joy.
‘This is a celebration of freedom, and diversity, and the melting pot that is the United States,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Obama!’
But what about the gentrification concerns?
Jordan Porter-Woodruff, 35, had walked there with her friend Leia Taylor, also 35. The two women live two blocks away.
‘I think it’s going to do more good than bad,’ said Porter-Woodruff. ‘It probably will put rents up, but that’s for the local government to manage. We’re happy to have this here.’
Veronica Smith, 43, had also walked to the site with her brother, Marcus.
‘There will be more development, and maybe rents will go up,’ she said. ‘But it’s worth it: It’s a park, a museum, a library – it’s everything. It really puts the South Side on the map.’
Indeed, admirers of the Obamas had flown in from far and wide.
From the moment the site was chosen, protests sprang up amongst locals, who worried about displacement and gentrification
In the park across the road, thousands more gathered for the official watch party, with the celebrations broadcast on giant screens
Chicagoans were out in force to celebrate the opening, like 77-year-old Sheila Clay, who sat with a heart-shaped USA balloon attached to her lawn chair
Jeannie Cancepa, from Napa, California, at at the front in an ‘I miss you Barack Obama’ t-shirt
Visitors flocked to Chicago from as far afield as California and Brazil to the party
Izabel Harris, 69, had traveled from her home in the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahia.
‘I lived in Chicago for 30 years; I voted for him,’ she said. ‘We used to go to the same church, Trinity. I had to be here today.’
Sylvia Chaney-Williamson, 76, had flown in from Oakland, California. Proudly wearing a 2013 inauguration hat and Obama earrings, she said Obama was ‘the most wonderful thing that has happened to America.’
‘Donald Trump is trying to take us down, and back to the past,’ she said. ‘But we are here to show them what a beautiful, positive people we are.’
Jeannie Cancepa, 64, from Napa, California, agreed. Sitting at the front in an ‘I miss you Barack Obama’ t-shirt, she said: ‘We love the Obamas, and are so frustrated with what it means to be an American right now. Disgusted is the word, actually. But being here reminds us of good times and gives us hope.’
