Obama has had a difficult year; after his wife Michelle defied the convention and chose not to attend, he sat by himself at both Donald Trump’s second inauguration and Jimmy Carter’s state funeral.
However, the federal lawsuit may cause further delays for Obama’s long-planned library and community center in Chicago, the Obama Presidential Center.
Obama has struggled with the center from the beginning. Obama will set a record for the amount of time that passes between the end of a presidency and the opening of a namesake museum because his library was sued over its proposed location, soaring costs, and construction problems, as quoted in a report by The Daily Mail.
This month, McGee filed a lawsuit in federal court against Thornton Tomasetti, based in New York, seeking reimbursement for construction expenses totalling approximately $40 million.
What are the allegations in the lawsuit?
The lawsuit alleges that Thornton Tomasetti subjected his company to ‘excessively rigorous and unnecessary inspection’ and copious paperwork, which ‘impacted productivity and resulted in millions in losses,’ and that he changed the project’s standards on multiple occasions.He also charged them with “racial discrimination.”
Due to racial discrimination by the structural engineer of record (Thornton Tomasetti) for the construction of the Obama Presidential Center, the African American owner of a local construction company finds himself and his business in danger of being forced to close, according to the lawsuit. This is a startling and depressing development.
According to the lawsuit, McGee never imagined that the structural engineer for the Obama Foundation would unfairly criticize a minority-owned subcontractor and falsely accuse II in One of lacking sufficient qualifications and experience to perform its work while affirming in the same letter that the non-minority-owned contractors were sufficiently qualified.
Thornton Tomasetti denied the allegations, sharing in a memo that the construction costs and delays were all unequivocally driven by the underperformance and inexperience of the black-owned subcontractor.
The Obama Foundation spokeswoman Emily Bittner told the Chicago Tribune that if the Foundation believed any vendor was acting with a racist intent, they would immediately take appropriate action.
FAQs
Why is Obama’s Presidential Center facing additional delays?
A subcontractor has sued a structural engineering firm, claiming racial discrimination and unfair treatment, adding to the project’s ongoing delays.
When does the Obama Presidential Center open?
Originally scheduled for 2021, the opening is now expected in 2026, marking the longest delay for a presidential library in recent history.
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