A rendering of the Obama Presidential Center’s athletic and conference center, designed by Moody Nolan. (Credit: Obama Foundation)
The Obama Presidential Center will not open to the public until spring 2026, ensuring that more than a decade will lapse between former President Barack Obama’s decision to build his presidential library in his adopted hometown and the center receiving its first visitors.
The center, which broke ground in September 2021 after a protracted legal battle over its location in Jackson Park, had been slated to open in October 2025. Construction on the more than $800 million complex is more than halfway complete, officials said.
“The grand opening event for the center will take place in 2026 once the Chicago weather lifts and we are able to have a truly spectacular event for all who have supported the project and made the center possible,” according to a spokesperson for the Obama Foundation.
Obama in 2015 picked Chicago’s Jackson Park to be the home of his privately run presidential library, with an original opening date set for 2021. Most of Obama’s predecessors opened their libraries within five years of leaving office; his is now set to open nearly a decade after he left the White House.
The new opening date for the Obama Presidential Center was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The news of the latest delay came as the Obama Foundation announced that it will break ground Monday on the center’s 45,000-square-foot athletic and conference center, which “will serve the community through a variety of youth and adult programming, global and network program events” while providing space for organizations to meet, according to the foundation spokesperson.
A rendering of the Obama Presidential Center’s athletic and conference center, designed by Moody Nolan. (Credit: Obama Foundation)
That building, designed by Moody Nolan, the firm that designed the Wintrust Arena, will open to the public in October 2025, foundation officials said. It will have an NBA-size basketball court, an homage to Obama’s love of the sport.
The center sits on 19 acres in Jackson Park, sandwiched between Woodlawn and South Shore, with an eight-story tower at its heart. The tower’s stone facade will be engraved with Obama’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
It will feature a first-of-its-kind library, offering access to Obama’s presidential papers in digital form, as well as a museum, public library branch, athletic center, test kitchen and children’s play area.
Organizers estimate about 750,000 visitors will come to the center each year, transforming the South Side — which has long suffered from disinvestment — with an economic boom.
A five-year legal battle over whether the center should be built in Jackson Park, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, delayed construction, as did the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chicago City Council in September 2020 approved a package of protections for longtime homeowners in Woodlawn from gentrification sparked by the center, while an effort to extend those protections to include residents of South Shore, which straddles the 5th and 7th wards, has stalled.
Voters in two 7th Ward precincts will be asked to weigh in on a nonbinding ballot question designed to pressure Mayor Brandon Johnson and Ald. Greg Mitchell (7th Ward) into supporting the South Shore Housing Preservation Ordinance, backed by Alds. Desmon Yancy (5th Ward) and Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward).
As recently as 2023, a nonbinding measure found widespread support for protections from gentrification among residents near the center, as well as for a plan to build affordable housing on the vacant lot at 63rd Street and Blackstone Avenue, the largest city-owned lot in Woodlawn.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
