Obama Foundation has done majority of contracting so far with diverse vendors
Lakeside Alliance representatives with construction workers during the Occupational Safety and Health Administration strategic partnership signing at the Obama Presidential Center site, November 2020.
Only 18% of the Obama Foundation's expenditures towards constructing the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park have been utilized to date, but 52% of those contracts have gone to minority- and women-owned business enterprises, the organization said in its first yearly workforce report.
These contractors have come out of the Lakeside Alliance, a joint venture of five construction management companies building the OPC.
Other vendors in the alliance are all Black-owned and based on the South Side.
Pamyla Fountain Brown, the community and citizenship director of Turner Construction's Chicago office—part of the Lakeside Alliance— noted the years-long efforts to get to know businesses that are interested in constructing the OPC. She said work has been done to build them up to where they need to be to compete for contracts.
"They were able to reach out to our team directly and schedule a one-on-one with us in which they had an opportunity to tell us about their business, what they do, how they do it, how large they are, what their expertise is," from drywall to painting to millwork, Fountain Brown said.
"What made this process a little bit different is that not only were we speaking to construction businesses, but we were speaking to businesses that maybe had a cleaning service, or maybe they printed T-shirts, or maybe they had a food truck," she said. "We wanted to make sure that we were building the widest tent possible to give everyone a shot at actually touching the project in a very meaningful way."
Fountain Brown said the way the Lakeside Alliance is doing hiring is helping the five consortium companies do better hiring.
"We are benefitting from the fact that we are being introduced to businesses who may have worked with one of our partners before," she said. "We're sharing those resources so even if we have companies that may or may not work on the Obama Presidential Center, because of this project, our team and our individual companies have met some folks with whom we'll likely work on other projects around the city. It's been a really perfect relationship in that way.
The Obama Foundation had set the goal for 35% of OPC workforce hours to be done by South and West Siders from underserved communities and that half of construction contracts be awarded to diverse vendors. One hundred and sixty bids have been awarded to date, with 46% of workforce hours being done by Chicagoans and 32% of those hired for construction being South and West Siders.
The foundation said a year ago that the OPC's cost or construction is $700 million. Its planned completion date is 2025.