Obama Marks Milestone in Construction of Presidential Center

As construction projects go, Barack Obama’s presidential center has not been the speediest or the simplest. Far from it.

But on Monday, 3,317 days after Mr. Obama announced plans to put the facility in Chicago, the former president was in town to celebrate the long-awaited structure reaching its full height, rising 225 feet above the city’s South Side. If all goes according to plan, the center will open to the public in 2026.

“When we started this thing, I wasn’t sure it was ever going to get done,” Mr. Obama said jokingly before using a black marker to sign a beam that will be installed at the center, where work on the building’s interior wall-framing and plumbing has started.

Many Chicagoans celebrated in 2015 when Mr. Obama announced that the center would be built in their city, where he worked as a community organizer and won election to the Illinois General Assembly and U.S. Senate. But landing the project turned out to be the easy part.

After the announcement, Mr. Obama took about a year to decide which plot to build on, eventually settling on land in Jackson Park near Lake Michigan and the University of Chicago. Residents raised concerns about gentrification, and parks advocates filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the center was an improper use of public land. The groundbreaking ceremony in 2021 came more than a full presidential term after Mr. Obama, America’s first Black president, left office.

But steadily, the facility has been taking shape, and the South Side has been preparing for the influx of tourists that the museum is expected to bring. The concrete structure now towers above Stony Island Avenue, and the stone facade is taking shape.