A Chicago plumbing contractor that helped build the Obama Presidential Center has suspended operations and laid off 25 union workers after a nearly $4 million payment dispute with the project's construction manager, and the Obama Foundation says it bears no responsibility.
Mike Owen built Adamson Plumbing Contractors into a company that could handle a presidential-scale project. On June 25, he shut it down. Owen told Fox News Digital that months of failed negotiations with Lakeside Alliance, the center's construction manager, left him no choice but to suspend operations, lay off roughly 25 union workers, abandon about half a dozen other construction jobs, and move out of his company's building. He now works from home.
The dispute centers on $3.9 million Owen says Adamson lost through delays, rework, labor overruns, and changing project demands during construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side. Adamson also filed a $1.72 million mechanic's lien, a legal claim against the property itself, alleging the company was never paid for completed plumbing work on campus.
Owen's account of the final weeks paints a picture of a small business squeezed past its breaking point. Before the center's June 19 opening, he said, Adamson struck a deal with Lakeside Alliance: provide two journeyman plumbers for last-minute "housekeeping" work at premium nighttime rates, and Lakeside would release a partial payment. An email reviewed by Fox News Digital showed a Lakeside representative telling Owen that $100,000 would be released through Adamson's May payment application.
The money did not arrive before the center opened. Owen suspended operations six days later.
"We negotiated it in good faith. Against my better judgment, I agreed [to do the work]."
More than two weeks after Owen pulled the plug, a $100,000 retainage payment and roughly $35,000 in change order payments finally came through from Lakeside. Owen called it "too little, too late." The payment, he said, "probably would have just prolonged the inevitable at this point. We're still deep in the hole of what they owe us."
The broader financial picture around the Obama Presidential Center has drawn sustained scrutiny. Construction costs ballooned from an initial projection of $350 million to $830 million by 2021 and have reportedly surpassed $1 billion. Meanwhile, the Obama Foundation secured the 19.3-acre Jackson Park site through a 99-year lease requiring a one-time payment of just $10.
A promised $470 million reserve fund, intended to protect Chicago taxpayers if the center encounters financial trouble, held just $1 million at the time of Fox News Digital's reporting.
Owen's company is far from alone. The New York Post reported that three additional subcontractors, Area Erectors, CSI 3,000, and Floors Incorporated, filed liens claiming they are owed $625,000, $236,000, and $25,000, respectively, for work on the center's basketball and events facility. Those claims total nearly $900,000.
A separate subcontractor, Concrete Collective, is seeking more than $40 million in additional payment, the largest known dispute tied to the project. Lakeside Alliance has previously stated that approximately 475 contractors worked on the center.
The pattern of unpaid contractors raises pointed questions about a project that was marketed as an economic engine for Chicago's South Side and minority-owned businesses. Lakeside Alliance itself is a joint venture led by Turner Construction and four Black-owned Chicago construction firms: UJAMAA Construction, Powers & Sons Construction, Brown & Momen, and Safeway Construction.
Owen told Fox News Digital he is not accusing former President Barack Obama of personal responsibility. But he questioned why political leaders have stayed silent. He singled out Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, noting that if a figure like Chicago billionaire Ken Griffin or Elon Musk had stiffed union contractors on a comparable project, the political response would have been immediate.
"There would be holy h*** to pay. They would be picketing. They would be storming the castle."
Pritzker's office did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Owen said the governor "hasn't said anything publicly about the [union companies at the] presidential center getting stiffed. And it bothers me."
Breitbart reported that the Obama Presidential Center's CEO was paid a $740,000 salary, even as the center sought unpaid skilled volunteers and costs continued to climb for taxpayers. Architect Tod Williams described Obama's own involvement in the project's scale, saying, "He was saying we should up our ante."
Owen reserved his sharpest criticism for the project's leadership structure. "It's become perfectly obvious to me that the ownership group there, they truthfully just don't care," he said. "I don't know any other way to say it."
The Obama Foundation, for its part, said it "had no outstanding disputed charges with Lakeside Alliance" and pointed to its commitment to a 15-day payment cycle, which it called "largely unheard of in major construction projects." The foundation also said it "sometimes accelerated payment timelines or advanced payments months before work was completed." But the foundation framed its financial relationship as running through Lakeside, not directly to subcontractors, a distinction that leaves companies like Adamson with limited recourse against the foundation itself.
Lakeside Alliance's response was brief. A spokesperson said the company "remains committed to working through all outstanding matters to successfully close out the project." In a separate statement, Lakeside said "contractual closeout continues long after the doors have opened" on major projects of such complexity. The construction manager did not directly address Owen's allegations, the layoffs, or the $1.72 million lien.
Owen said he has turned the broader $3.9 million claim over to his attorneys and intends to pursue it through the legal system. Newsmax reported on the dispute weeks before the shutdown, quoting Owen as saying, "I feel like an aluminum can that's been thrown in front of a steamroller. We're crushed."
"I'm not a litigious person, but at the same time, our legal system is there to protect the small guy. I'm just going to have to fight this out legally from here on out, and these aren't cheap costs."
Owen said he hopes to regroup by September and assess whether the company can resume. But the financial and emotional toll has been severe. "This entire process really drained me out financially and emotionally," he said. "So that's where I'm at, just kind of in a holding pattern."
Meanwhile, Chicago taxpayers have already spent $123 million on roads and infrastructure around the center. The promised $470 million safety net remains almost entirely unfunded. And the center opened June 18 with performances by Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Bono, Stevie Wonder, and others, a celebration Owen watched from the outside.
Owen's career, meanwhile, hangs in the balance. "I'm going to have to go find a job, which is fine," he said. "It's just that I did not anticipate the completion of this project would take this turn."
The Obama Foundation built a billion-dollar monument to hope and opportunity on Chicago's South Side. The contractors who did the actual work are still waiting to see any of it. Scandals tied to the Obama orbit, from fraud charges against a former press aide to stiffed union workers, keep piling up, and the people left holding the bill are never the ones who gave the speeches.