A federal lawsuit filed earlier this month alleges one of the main firms involved in managing the construction of the Obama Presidential Center racially discriminated against one of the project’s African-American owned local subcontractors, leaving them $40 million in the red and at risk of bankruptcy.
But the company in charge of engineering and professional design services for the center pointed the finger right back, saying in an attached memo that construction costs and delays “were all unequivocally driven by the underperformance and inexperience” of that subcontractor, II in One.
Robert McGee, the owner of II in One, a South Side firm that provided concrete and rebar services for the center starting in 2021, sued New York-based Thornton Tomasetti in federal court earlier this month, seeking to be paid back for roughly $40 million in construction costs the local firm covered itself along with its joint venture partners.
II in One blamed Thornton Tomasetti for changing standards, saying the company made an “improper and unanticipated decision” to impose new rules around rebar spacing and tolerance requirements, subjected the company to “excessively rigorous and unnecessary inspection,” and extensive paperwork that “impacted productivity and resulted in millions in losses.”
The suit alleges race discrimination, claiming the engineering company falsely singled out the minority-owned II for One for its errors, while “stating the non-minority-owned contractors were sufficiently qualified,” causing “extreme financial loss and reputational harm” for II for One.
The former president’s namesake museum campus already weathered a yearslong pause during separate legal challenges to its plans to build in a public park. The main museum building’s opening was pushed back to 2026, while its athletic center is scheduled to open this year. The Wall Street Journal reported Obama’s center set a modern record for the time lapsed between the end of a presidency and the opening of a namesake museum.
Former President Barack Obama visited the construction site last June for the “topping off” of the museum building, and the foundation announced concrete work wrapped up in October 2024.
Obama Foundation spokeswoman Emily Bitter said in an email Thursday that, “If the Foundation believed that any vendor was acting with a racist intent, we would immediately take appropriate action. We have no reason to believe that Thornton Tomasetti acted with racist intent.”
Attorneys for II in One and the Concrete Collective joint venture of which the company is a member declined comment.
Representatives for Thornton Tomasetti did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In the February 2024 memo attached to the suit, Thornton Tomasetti shared images of cracked slab and exposed rebar, telling Obama Foundation leadership that the Concrete Collective submitted hundreds of requests to correct its work in the field, that Thornton Tomasetti spent “hundreds of hours reviewing, analyzing, re-designing and responding to corrective work,” and that contractors caused “a multitude of problems in the field.”
Concrete Collective submitted an initial “request for equitable adjustment” for additional costs it incurred in May of 2023 but was rejected, the suit claimed, based on Thornton Tomasetti’s “defamatory and discriminatory statements.” By the time they finished, the collective claimed it self-funded about $41 million in work.
Thornton Tomasetti’s criticism, the suit said, was “unfair” and falsely accused II in One of “lacking sufficient qualifications,” despite its experience on dozens of high-profile public projects like Millennium Park, McCormick Place, Midway and O’Hare Airports, Wrigley Field, the Chicago Riverwalk, Northwestern Hospital and several Chicago Housing Authority buildings.
The criticism, the suit said, led the Obama Foundation to deny covering those extra construction costs, potentially forcing the firm’s owner to seek bankruptcy and close up shop.
This flare-up also “directly undermined the Obama Foundation’s DEI goals and commitments and mission to bring transformative change to the construction industry and local community,” the suit claimed.
Obama pledged to hire local workers, contractors, and firms owned by minorities, women, veterans, LGBTQ individuals and people with disabilities.
Work was briefly halted at the site in 2022 after officials reported finding a noose, an incident condemned as an act of hate but that did not result in arrests. Federal health and safety officials are also investigating a fall at the site from earlier this month.
