Four Presidents Toast as Obama's $850 Million Chicago Center Opens

A decade of fighting ends with a star-studded party

The Obama Presidential Center was unveiled on the South Side of Chicago on Thursday, capping more than a decade of planning, a court battle with preservationists and years of construction in Jackson Park.nytimes The dedication ceremony at the center's John Lewis Plaza drew a rare gathering of four former presidents on one stage — Barack Obama alongside George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr. — plus former first ladies Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Jill Biden.nytimes +1 The Roots opened the event, and Michelle Obama dabbed away tears during a performance by Chicago-raised singer Jennifer Hudson.nytimes

The $850 million, roughly 19-acre campus officially opens to the public on Friday, Juneteenth.chicago +1 The grand-opening lineup ran deep, featuring Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Common, Eddie Vedder, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, and U2's Bono and The Edge.chicago Security rivaled a national convention, with anti-scale fencing, magnetometers, drone overwatch and a temporary flight restriction over the site.chicago

A new model for the presidential library

The center is built to redefine the scale of the modern presidential project, setting new marks for cost, construction time and admission price.cnbc A general museum ticket will run $30, making it the most expensive presidential museum or library to visit.cnbc Unlike the libraries of other modern presidents, it will not be run by the National Archives and Records Administration but privately by the Obama Foundation, giving it more freedom over how it tells stories and less red tape around funding.cnbc

The signature building is a blocky, granite-clad museum tower that Obama wanted to evoke four upraised hands.nytimes Rising 225 feet, the structure — nicknamed the "Obamalisk" — has divided critics, looking like a beacon when sunlight turns the gray stone pink and cold and forbidding from other angles.nytimes Backers frame the campus, which also includes a public library branch, a playground and athletic facilities, as an economic engine for the South Side.cnbc

Trump left off the guest list

One prominent name was missing from the celebration: President Donald Trump, a frequent Obama critic who was not invited and who recently compared the center to a trash heap.nytimes +1 As the museum opened, Trump mocked its design and cost while promoting his own planned post-presidential skyscraper.washingtonpost Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayor who helped land the project in 2015, cast it in generational terms, calling it "a billion-dollar infusion of an investment that pays dividends way beyond the billion dollars, specifically on the South Side."nytimes