Obama Center builders release subcontractor bid package, update state of construction
Hyde Park Herald
Construction of the Obama Presidential Center is ongoing and on schedule in Jackson Park, and the Lakeside Alliance consortium of construction companies building the complex has released the second-to-last bidding package for subcontractors.
Bidding for subcontracting work in roofing, flooring and carpeting, site earthwork and asphalt paving is open. Work will begin for these projects at the OPC in 2023 and finish early in 2025. Up-to-date information is available at lakesidealliance.com.
Kelly Powers Baria, co-lead of Lakeside Alliance's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work Group of Lakeside Alliance and vice president of Powers & Sons, said the last of the bid packages will be released in the spring and that procurement is expected to conclude by the summer.
The Lakeside Alliance is committing to award at least 50% of the packages to diverse businesses, specifically 35% minority-owned businesses, 10% women-owned businesses and 5% to businesses owned by veterans or LGBTQ people.
Construction update
"A lot of the early activities that you're seeing now are the site preparation work so that we can begin to put the foundations and the structure of the building in," said Jimmy Akintonde, one of the Lakeside Alliance's principals and president of Ujamaa Construction.
Much of the early work was getting the site ready: clearing the land, including the project's controversial felling of park trees. Lakeside Alliance ensured that the site itself was stable by getting all the water underneath the foundations out of the way, then workers did Geopier drilling, in which a cavity is drilled and filled with compacted, tougher material, to stabilize the soil. This has been the only construction able to be seen beyond the project's walls so far.
Asked about seasonality affecting the work, Akintonde said Chicago has the best general contractors in the nation and that correct approaches can overcome rain, snow, and freezing temperatures. The earth doesn't freeze below 36-42 inches, and because they prepared the site late last fall to work this winter, work can continue.
The next phase is concrete foundation work and work with rebar. "At that point is when you'll start seeing the building begin to take shape and start coming out of the ground. You'll probably start seeing more activity that you can physically see from the street up around I'd say midsummer, and then it's full craziness after," Akintonde said, laughing.
The building's shell will take shape, and Akintonde said construction density will increase as interior buildouts begin, but that process is a few years away. The Obama Foundation expects that the center will open in 2025.
Akintonde said the Lakeside Alliance will be there for at least another three to four years. "It's so early in construction that you don't know what you're going to run into, but we're trending on schedule," he said.
The biggest potential cause of delays is the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, said Akintonde, which is affecting the supply chain, material procurement, and the workforce. Working outside, as they are doing now, is beneficial for workers, but there are a lot of unknowns.
The Lakeside Alliance has no control over construction materials that are fabricated off-site and needed at a certain time to sustain workflow. Akintonde said there had been issues procuring structural steel because of competition with the construction of Amazon warehouses across Chicagoland. That issue was resolved after those warehouses got built, but then it became harder to get roofing or caulking material and lumber on site.
The marketplace is beginning to stabilize, Akintonde said, but the Lakeside Alliance is in competition for labor and material with other large construction projects in Chicago, depending on the OPC's and other projects' schedules. "There's only so much that can go around," he said.
Time will tell to what degree this becomes a problem as OPC construction activity intensifies; Akintonde said the staff is very competent, relations with the Obama Foundation's construction team are good and, unlike the situation in other industries amid the "Great Resignation," labor relations are good with the unionized construction workforce.