Obama Presidential Center Reaches $1B in Total Costs

Lakeside Alliance, the joint venture contractor led by Turner Construction that built the main building on the campus—the Obama Presidential Center—said that its costs have not increased since completing the project early last year. The Obama Foundation’s filing said the increases were for additional construction scope, such as the 60,000-sq-ft Home Court basketball center on the campus, plus public art and insurance. Indeed, the Home Court was constructed by Elevate Design Builders Group, a joint venture between Bowa Construction and AECOM Hunt Construction.

“While we continue to reconcile costs and plan ahead for additional capital improvements, we anticipate our total cost for constructing the campus is approximately $1 billion—again, all raised in private contributions,” Emily Bittner, the foundation’s vice president of communications said in an interview with Fox News Digital. 

The trade contractors who worked on the various projects within the nearly 20-acre campus all said that they had not been informed that any of the recent $91 million cost projection would go toward resolution of liens and other legal actions against the Obama Foundation and its contractors. The original project budget was announced as $350 million, jumped to $500 million when design was completed in 2017 and ballooned to $850 million in early September before this latest filing. 

In a statement, the Obama Foundation said it has no outstanding disputed charges with the joint venture contractor Lakeside Alliance and the foundation has no direct legal agreements or contracts with Lakeside’s subcontractors The statement also said, “Change orders are very common in similarly scaled projects with a major architect.”

The Foundation did not immediately respond to questions about increased costs for contracts on the other parts of the campus built by Elevate Design Builders.