Barack Obama just bulldozed a beloved public park in Chicago to build what looks like a concrete spaceship—and locals aren’t happy about it.
The $850 million Obama Presidential Center is being slammed by residents, architects, and even some left-wingers as an eyesore and a betrayal. Construction started back in 2021, and when it wraps up next spring, Chicago’s Jackson Park will be forever changed. Not for the better.
“This is a palace for himself,” said Grahm Balkany, a well-known Chicago architect and self-described liberal. “It’s just contrary to what I thought he believed in.” Welcome to the club, Grahm. A lot of folks are finally waking up to the fact that Obama’s “hope and change” was mostly about himself.
W.J.T. Mitchell, an art historian at the University of Chicago, called the building a “cenotaph, a tombstone, a crusader fortress in brutalist style.” And don’t even get him started on the environmental impact. “They started clear-cutting a thousand healthy, century-old trees,” he said. “It struck many people as an environmental disaster.”
So much for being the “green” president.
The library also bulldozed a local picnic haven—the Women’s Garden—just to make space for construction equipment. And if that wasn’t enough, the new center has already driven up rent prices nearby, pushing out low-income residents. So now, in a bizarre twist, the Obama monument is hurting the very community it was supposedly built to honor.
“This was an administration that many people in Chicago supported,” said Ward Miller of Preservation Chicago, “and then to see that same administration take these 20 acres from the public was very disturbing.”
Translation: Obama paved paradise and put up a stone ego trip.
Want to see what President Trump thinks of Obama’s overbudget, monolith-looking museum?