Three subcontractors who helped build the Obama Presidential Center's basketball facility in Chicago say they are still owed nearly $900,000, the latest in a growing pattern of payment disputes on a project whose cost has tripled to more than $1 billion.
Area Erectors, CSI 3000, and Floors Incorporated each filed mechanics liens against the Obama Presidential Center property for work they performed on Home Court, a 60,000-square-foot basketball and events venue at the southern end of the campus in Jackson Park. Area Erectors, a structural steel firm, is seeking nearly $620,000. CSI 3000, an excavation and concrete subcontractor designated as a Minority Business Enterprise, claims about $236,000. Floors Incorporated, a gymnasium flooring specialist, says it is owed nearly $25,000. The three claims together total close to $900,000, the New York Post reported.
All three liens were recorded with the Cook County Clerk's Office around the time the center opened on June 19. A four-to-six-week processing delay at the clerk's office kept them out of the searchable online database until recently.
None of the three Home Court subcontractors responded to requests for comment. Neither did the Obama Foundation nor Elevate Design Builders, the joint venture led by minority-owned BOWA Construction that served as Home Court's construction manager.
The Home Court claims are only part of the picture. Fox News Digital identified three additional, previously unreported mechanics liens filed against the broader Obama Presidential Center property, bringing the newly surfaced total to roughly $1.46 million.
O'Leary's Contractors Equipment & Supply is seeking about $184,000 in allegedly unpaid equipment rental invoices. The Cement Masons' Union Trust Funds alleges more than $326,000 in unpaid fringe benefit contributions. And Intek Construction Products is seeking about $47,000 for labor and materials. Those three claims total approximately $557,000.
Jeffrey Molchan of Intek Construction Products said his company filed its lien while seeking payment on a final invoice from another contractor.
Molchan told Fox News Digital:
"The project did not go as well as we anticipated in terms of the timeliness of the payment."
That is a polite way to describe what amounts to a recurring problem. The Obama Presidential Center was initially estimated to cost about $350 million. The final price tag has ballooned past $1 billion. And a string of subcontractors, many of them small firms, some minority-owned, have been left chasing money they say they earned.
The new liens land on top of a pile of prior disputes that have already drawn scrutiny. Adamson Plumbing claimed it was left nearly $4 million in the red, suspended operations, and laid off workers. Glass Management Services and Vision Painting & Decorating Services both sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Court records do not establish that the Obama Presidential Center directly caused those bankruptcies, but the timeline speaks for itself.
At least four other companies filed mechanics liens during the construction phase. Two of those previously identified claims have since been withdrawn. One claimant said it recovered the amount it sought through the lien process but still lost about $200,000 on the project overall. One previously reported lien remains unresolved.
Then there is the largest claim of all. Concrete Collective filed a mechanics lien seeking more than $40 million. That lien was replaced by a court-approved surety bond, but the underlying dispute continues in court. The scale of that single claim dwarfs the six newly identified liens combined.
Fox News Digital had previously reported that Black subcontractors alleged they were owed millions of dollars for work on the project, a particularly uncomfortable fact for a center built in Barack Obama's name, in a historically Black neighborhood, with explicit commitments to minority contracting. Those unpaid-loss claims were already public before the grand opening.
Lakeside Alliance, the primary construction manager for most of the Obama Presidential Center campus, issued a statement acknowledging that work remains to be done on the financial side.
"The Obama Presidential Center involved multiple structures, hundreds of trade partners and community businesses, and that contractual closeout continues after the center's opening."
The joint venture said it "remains committed to working through outstanding matters." That language is careful, it neither disputes the amounts claimed nor commits to a payment timeline.
A mechanics lien is a routine legal tool on construction projects, used to recover unpaid costs by placing a claim against the property itself. Filing one does not prove the claimant is right. But when six new liens surface on a single project in a matter of weeks, on top of prior disputes involving tens of millions of dollars, the pattern raises fair questions about how the Obama Foundation and its contractors managed payments to the firms that did the actual work.
The project has also faced legal challenges over contracting practices and diversity requirements, though details on the current status of those disputes remain limited.
Home Court features a regulation-size NBA basketball court, training space, and multipurpose meeting and event rooms. The basketball court is decorated with phrases including "Yes we can" and "No one does big things alone." The former president attended WNBA All-Star Weekend events at the facility this week.
The irony of that second phrase, "No one does big things alone", is hard to miss when the small firms that helped build the court say they have not been paid. CSI 3000 is a designated Minority Business Enterprise. Floors Incorporated laid the gymnasium floor. Area Erectors put up the structural steel. These are not abstract corporate entities. They are the companies that did the physical labor, and their liens say the checks have not followed.
The Obama Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Elevate Design Builders. That silence, combined with Lakeside Alliance's carefully worded statement about "contractual closeout," leaves the subcontractors without a public answer about when, or whether, they will be made whole.
A billion-dollar project that started at $350 million, built in the name of a president who championed working families, now has a trail of unpaid claims and financial questions stretching from small subcontractors to a $40 million court battle. The center is open. The bills are not settled.
When the people who poured the concrete and raised the steel have to file liens to get paid, the building may be finished, but the project's promises are not.
