Barack Obama is a celebrity multimillionaire these days, but he's also a former president. He just hasn't gotten around to doing the things most ex-presidents have already accomplished at this point in their post-White House careers. It has been almost eight years since Obama left office, and he still hasn't published a completed memoir of his presidency. The first of (at least) two volumes, A Promised Land (2020), was almost 800 pages long. No word yet on when the second volume will hit bookstores.
Obama's presidential library in Chicago is also nowhere near completion. It's not even a library. The so-called Obama Presidential Center won't be anything like the reverential monuments constructed by his predecessors. There's no research library or presidential archive—Obama's records will be digitized and published online—but there is a museum, fitness center, playground, recording studio, teaching kitchen, several gardens, and a sledding hill. The center will be run by the Obama Foundation, a private nonprofit, rather than the taxpayer-funded National Archives and Records Administration. Its mission is no less than to "inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world." Above all, it is a hideous monstrosity befitting the outsized ego of its namesake.
Located on a sprawling 19-acre campus in Jackson Park on the city's south side, the half-finished construction site is dominated by a 225-foot "museum tower" that looks like a brutalist tomb designed to house the remains of some tinpot oil sheikh or dictator from one of the ex-Soviet "stan" countries. The horrendous design was approved by a committee of experts including Caroline Kennedy's husband, Meryl Streep's ex-husband, and Democratic megadonor Fred Eychaner. A large portion of the self-monument will be engraved with words from one of Obama's speeches so that all may marvel at Dear Leader's eloquence. It certainly feels like a place where mere citizens are expected to make pilgrimage and weep in awe; one of the first things rebel forces would destroy after seizing power in a revolution.
The artist renderings are just as hideous.
Conceived in 2016, the Obama center didn't break ground until 2021 due to a lengthy federal review. By then the project cost had soared from $500 million to more than $800 million. The Obamas also had to fight off legal challenges from local residents and preservation groups who complained that black people would be displaced by inevitable gentrification. Solstice on the Park, a relatively new apartment complex overlooking the center, offers one-bedroom units with monthly rents between $2,600 and $4,000. At the groundbreaking ceremony in 2021, a prop plane flew a banner that read: "Stop cutting down trees. Move OPC."
The monstrous tower reached full height in June, at which point the New York Times reported the center would open to the public in 2026 if all goes according to plan. That seems ambitious given the state of the construction site, but also because the Obamas have insisted on an array of environmental restrictions, as well as gender and racial quotas, that are bound to complicate efforts to finish in a timely manner.
The consortium of construction firms leading the project released a "community impact" report in April with creepy pie charts. One of those charts depicts a "workforce hours summary by race," which shows that African Americans account for 35.6 percent of total workforce hours, compared to 32.2 percent for Caucasians, and 0.3 percent for Asians. The report also explains how the project is working to ensure that 50 percent of the work is done by business owned by "minorities, women, veterans, people with disabilities or people who identify as LGBTQ+."
Judging by the graffiti adorning the hippie farmer's market banner across the street, some locals are still a tad resentful and unlikely to change their minds after learning that a blind lesbian helped install the plumbing. The race is on see which Obama monstrosity will be completed first—his presidential center or the second volume of his third memoir. Either way, his former running mate (and current president) Joe Biden, 81, probably won't live to see it.
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