The Obama Presidential Center | From First Permit to Final Revision

Some projects are jobs. Some are milestones. The Obama Presidential Center is both.

Burnham Nationwide has been part of this project since 2017, when Chris Downes walked into a meeting at Obama's Hyde Park offices on Harper Court and thought: we have to get this job. Nearly eight years, dozens of permit applications, and five structures later, the Obama Presidential Center opens on Chicago's South Side this month. And Burnham was there for all of it.

A Campus Built Permit by Permit

The scope was as complex as you'd expect for a project of this scale. The center comprises four buildings under the Obama Foundation's direct purview: a museum, a library, a forum, and a parking structure. A fifth building, an athletic center, rounds out the campus. Burnham managed permit applications across every structure, from foundation permits to house number certificates, full building permits, revision permits, driveway permits, signage, and public way closures.

What made this project unusual wasn't just the name attached to it. It was how smoothly it ran.

Weekly coordination meetings, clear expectations, and a foundation team that trusted the process kept things moving from the first shovel in the ground through occupancy.

When the Smallest Permits Carry the Most Weight

Even the smallest permits had their moments. Louie Greenebaum, who handled signage and driveway permits for the project, spent months working to close out a driveway permit that should have been routine. A contractor had inadvertently allowed their license to lapse. The permits had to be resolved before the driveway permit could move forward. By the time the parking garage operator came knocking because they couldn't get their own license without a driveway permit in place, Burnham was already deep in the chase. "It's a permit expediter story," Greenebaum said. The driveway permit eventually cleared. The garage got its license. Thousands of visitors are parking their cars with no idea what it took.

A Career Measured in Moments Like This

A project like this leaves marks you can point to. Years from now, Chris Downes can bring his family and friends to the Obama Presidential Center, walk them past the fountain on the grounds, and tell them he pulled that permit. That is what a career in this work looks like.

The Last Permits Ever Issued Under the Old Chicago Building Code

On the code side, because permit applications were filed and paid before Chicago's 2020 code transition deadline, the project was grandfathered under the old building code, a move that saved the foundation millions in glass standards alone. Every revision, every alternative code approval, had to stay consistent with that older framework, right through the final revision permits filed late last year, which were in all likelihood the last permits ever issued under the old Chicago building code.

For the team that lived inside all of that complexity, the technical wins are satisfying. But the thing that sticks is simpler than any of it.

Kristina Paprzyca, who has been with Burnham for 15 years, said it best: "I'll never work on a presidential library ever in my life again. It's who it represents and it's what it represents."

That goes for all of us.