President Barack Obama’s promise to build and revitalize blighted neighborhoods was a centerpiece of his first term in the White House.

However, nearly nine years after leaving the Oval Office, he may have an impact on a vital part of the city he once called home, as revealed by the Daily Mail.

His $850 million presidential center in Chicago—set to open in April—has faced criticism from locals, community leaders, and even former supporters who now caution that the sprawling 19.3-acre facility in Jackson Park is driving gentrification, raising rents, and displacing families.

Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, who represents a significant portion of the area where the center is being constructed, expressed her admiration for Obama and support for the project but has been advocating against certain elements to safeguard her constituents. Her efforts have yielded mixed outcomes.

‘We’re going to see rents go higher and we’re going to see families displaced,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘Every time large development comes to communities, they displace the very people they say they want to improve it for,’ the Democrat added.

‘This was no different, and we’re living what is actually happening. The city of Chicago should have done a Community Benefits Agreement before the first shovel went into the ground, but they didn’t.’

A CBA is a legally binding document that outlines what a developer will provide for a project such as affordable housing, local hiring and environmental protections.

Barack Obama’s legacy project in Chicago has been beset with issues since the start such as ballooning costs and construction delays

The Obama Presidential Center will be located in Jackson Park, in the heart of the South Side of Chicago, an area that has been long plagued with crime and poverty 

Chicago residents and onetime supporters of Obama, including activist Ken Woodard (pictured) say the former president’s $850 million initiative is doing more harm to the community than good

‘We’re going to see small landlords having to raise the rent,’ warned Taylor. ‘Their property taxes are going up and we’re going to see development that is not inclusive to our community.’

Allison Davis of Aquinnah Investment Trust, who has close ties with Obama, plans to build a 26-story, 250-room luxury hotel just down the street from the center. 

And Taylor said ‘$300,000 and $400,000 homes that nobody can afford’ are already popping up around the area on Chicago’s poverty-stricken South Side.

Taylor is not the only critic.

‘It looks like this big piece of rock that just landed here out of nowhere in what used to be a really nice landscape of trees and flowers,’ Ken Woodard, 39, an attorney and father of six who grew up in the area told Daily Mail. ‘It’s a monstrosity.

‘It’s over budget, it’s taking way too long to finish and it’s going to drive up prices and bring headaches and problems for everyone who lives here.

‘It feels like a washing away of the neighborhood and culture that used to be here.’

President Obama and former first lady Michelle were seen breaking ground during the dedication ceremony in 2021 

Some locals have gone as far to dub the massive development a ‘monstrosity’ that they say has ‘washed away’ the neighborhood and its culture

Obama supporter and alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, who represents much of the area where the center is being built, told the Daily Mail that the project will likely drive up rent prices and push families out

Tyrone Muhammad, a South Side native, director of Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change and a 2026 Illinois Senate candidate, was among the first to raise the alarm about the project back in 2020.

‘To me it’s truly the Tower of Babel,’ Muhammad said.

‘There’s a lot of babbling going on with the Obama Center that never seems to get to anywhere. It’s disconnected from the community it says it wants to serve. There’s this ongoing battle around it that involves policies that never serve or effect change for the community.’

Muhammad called it ‘disingenuous’ and ‘hypocritical’ to take park space away from people and then not involve them in what takes its place. 

The move ‘violates common decency’, he said.

Kyana Butler, 30, who lives in the area, is a member of the Southside Together group, one of at least three major activist groups that has lobbied for better protections for the area from the Obama Foundation.

‘It’s pretty huge and monstrous,’ Butler told the Daily Mail.

‘It could have been smaller in scale and cost a lot less money. We’re all worried about the impact on the community.

The development is intended to serve as a lively community hub and uplift its low-income Black population, but locals fear it will inevitably displace the very people it’s meant to support

The massive 19-acre campus (pictured under construction on August 14) will feature a fruit and vegetable garden, athletic programs, an events facility, a museum and a new branch of the Chicago Public Library

A rendering of The Obama Presidential Center. The facility won’t open until April 2026 after its original opening date of 2021 was pushed back several times, with the cost ballooning from $350 million to $830 million

‘Rents are going up fast. A two-bedroom apartment that used to rent for $800 a month has already jumped to $1,800.

‘Property taxes are going up so much that the owner of my building is saying she might just walk away.

‘I don’t blame President Obama for all of this, but the people on his team may not have the best intentions for people in this area.’

The Obama Foundation, which is bankrolling the project with big donations from billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey and George Soros, says the center will be a ‘welcoming, vibrant campus where people from across the street or from around the globe can come to get inspired and find common ground’.

But that hasn’t stopped it becoming a punchline on social media.

It has been dubbed a ‘concrete tomb’, ‘a totalitarian command center dropped straight out of 1984’, ‘a monument to megalomania’ and ‘a giant trash can’.

The center, which will include the enormous 225-foot tall museum tower along with community and athletic facilities, gardens and event spaces and a branch of the Chicago Public Library, is not a typical presidential library.

Instead of original documents from Obama’s two terms, it will house digitized versions.

Daily Mail spent much of last week at the site where constructions workers were seen on the job – but they seem to have a lot of work still to do

Some locals have criticized developers for taking away their park (pictured in 2020 before construction) without any input from the community on the plans for the new development in its place

An aerial view from August 14 shows ongoing construction where the athletic field once was 

And unlike the libraries of of presidents going back to Herbert Hoover, which are non-partisan National Archives, this is the first to be completely privately funded.

It was originally slated to open in 2021, was pushed back to 2024 and is now set to open in April 2026.

Workers on the center blame policies and lengthy DEI sessions for the delay.

‘It was all very woke from the time they broke ground in 2021,’ a construction foreman on the site told the Daily Mail.

‘Every so often a bunch of staffers from the Obama Foundation wearing little badges would come by the site and they’d ask us silly questions like, are you white, straight, gay, trans, whatever. It was ridiculous.’

The foreman, who is white, said he and the rest of the crew had to sit through three, 90-minute DEI workshops during his 18-month stint.

‘They talked about the oppressors and the oppressed and how we are supposed to help people of color and ask them how they feel,’ he said.

Obama Foundation officials say the center will open April 26, much of the site on Chicago’s South Side looks very much still under construction

Tyrone Muhammad, a South Side native, director of Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change and a 2026 Illinois Senate candidate, was among the first to raise the alarm about the project back in 2020

‘They told weird stories. I remember something about a reverend and two apple trees, and one guy had a short ladder and one had a tall ladder. 

‘I think it was supposed to show us that some people aren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

‘I don’t know. We just kinda tuned out.’

President Trump has also slammed the building as a ‘disaster’.

‘[Obama] said, “I only want DEI. I only want woke”. He wants woke people to build it,’ Trump said in May during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

‘Well, he got woke people and they have massive cost overruns. The job is stopped.’

That claim proved false. The work actually has not stopped.

Daily Mail spent much of last week at the site, and workers were very much on the job – but they seemed to have a lot more to do.

The Obama Foundation is bankrolling the project with big donations from billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, and George Soros

The Georgian-style mansion in the Kenwood/Hyde Park area of Chicago in one of the wealthier areas of the South Side where Barack and Michelle Obama lived for 20 years

Steve Cortes, a longtime Chicagoan and former adviser to President Trump who recently made a documentary titled ‘You Don’t Know Barack: Exposing Obama,’ has called the Obama Center ‘absurd’.

‘It’s way behind schedule and on track to cost upwards of a billion dollars,’ Cortes said.

‘Some cost overruns are normal, but not when it winds up being three times what it was supposed to cost.

‘I’d argue that part of the problem has been the insistence on minority contractors or women. Look at the Reagan Library. It’s beautiful.

‘This? There are almost no windows. What are they hiding? And this Brutalist cement look in a city known for its incredible architecture. Why?

‘This is a monument to one man’s ego. You know Obama had to approve it.’

Demonstrators with the Community Benefits Agreement Coalition have been seen rallying in favor of affordable housing protection for the surrounding communities in the past 

The foreman, who spoke under condition of anonymity, noted one other strange feature of the building. 

‘The place is built like a bomb shelter,’ he said.

‘The walls are a foot and a half thick. Some of the shafts are three feet thick. Walls have a blast rating and the windows – what few there are – and the doors have blast rating.

‘I’ve been doing this for 37 years and this is the first time I worked on a building that had a blast rating.’

A spokeswoman for the Obama Center did not respond to the Daily Mail’s questions about cost overruns and other criticisms by activists. Instead, she emailed a general statement:

‘Sitting on nearly 20 acres in Jackson Park, the Obama Presidential Center will be a tremendous global destination and public community asset, with a playground, restaurant, branch of the Chicago Public Library, fruit and vegetable garden and sledding hill to name a few elements,’ the statement read.

‘We are proud that members of the community played key roles in building the center, and we are looking forward to hiring local residents for hundreds of good jobs when the Center opens.’