Artistic impression of the planned Obama Presidential Center’s main tower…Credit…New York Times/Obama Foundation

Former President Barack Obama, along with Michelle Obama, the former first lady, broke ground on his presidential centre on the South Side of Chicago. The project, according to a New York Times report, is estimated to cost $830 million and is expected to take four years to build.

According to Obama: “We envision this as a place where residents and visitors from all over the world come together and restore the promise of the people’s park. So that will be the core mission of the centre and our foundation programming. We were married here, had our reception right down at South Shore Cultural Center. Our daughters were born here, right down the street at the hospital. We bought our first home here a few blocks away. It’s where I taught law and Michelle worked with students at the university and patients at the hospital. It’s where I announced my first campaign for public office.”

“It’s about giving a little something back to the place that we absolutely, truly love, because to me this doesn’t feel so much like building something new. It feels like we’re helping to reveal what has always been here.”

In an hourlong ceremony that was scaled down because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Obama and Michelle Obama, the former first lady, scooped up dirt with commemorative shovels at the 19-acre site in Jackson Park, near the shores of Lake Michigan.
Joining the Obamas for the groundbreaking, which was streamed online, were Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago.

“This day has been a long time coming,” Mr. Obama said. “The pandemic had other plans, so we’re keeping this small for now.”

Mr. Obama, 60, a Democrat who left office in January 2017, said that the presidential centre would become a catalyst for job growth and economic development in the place where he came of age as a politician, husband and father. The project, he said, would also turn Chicago’s South Side into a destination not just for people to learn about his presidency but also for future leaders.

“Chicago is where I found the purpose that I had been seeking,” said Mr. Obama, who in 2008 became the first Black person elected to the U.S. presidency.

New York Times Reported further: “In a departure from similar projects recognizing former presidents, the centre won’t actually be a presidential library. It won’t house Mr. Obama’s presidential papers, which will be digitized — a decision that has been a sore point for some presidential observers. Mr. Obama envisioned that the centre would host concerts, cultural events, lectures, training and summits.

“We want this centre to be more than a static museum or a source of archival research,” Mr. Obama said. “It won’t just be a collection of campaign memorabilia or Michelle’s ball gowns, although I know everybody will come to see those. It won’t just be an exercise in nostalgia or looking backwards. We want to look forward.”

Construction of the presidential center, whose estimated price tag has soared from initial projections of $500 million to $830 million, is expected to take four years.

“A 235-foot “museum tower” will be the focal point of the centre. Words taken from Mr. Obama’s 2015 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Ala., will wrap around the tower’s exterior to create a sunscreen. The center will include a Chicago Public Library branch, a great lawn, a children’s play area, a fruit and vegetable garden, and a teaching kitchen.

President Biden, who served as Mr. Obama’s vice president for eight years, did not attend the ceremony but offered his support in a prerecorded message.
“It’s not just breaking ground on a new building,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s breaking ground on the very idea of America as a place of possibilities.”

The selection of Chicago by the Obamas for the presidential centre reaffirmed the city’s seminal role in their political and personal lives.
Mr. Obama taught law at the University of Chicago for 12 years before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. It was at a Chicago law firm that he met his wife in 1989: She had been assigned to serve as his mentor. And the city is where the future first couple started their family.

Mrs. Obama, 57, said that even though she had dined with heads of state, kings and queens, in addition to having shaken hands with two popes, she had not forgotten her roots.
“One of my greatest honors is being a proud Chicagoan, a daughter of the South Side,” Mrs. Obama said. “I still lead with that descriptor. I wear it boldly and proudly like a crown.”