While Springsteen played for Oprah and three former presidents, Mike Owen was figuring out how to tell his workers they no longer had jobs.
Owen ran the plumbing crew at Obama's billion-dollar monument – and when it was over, Lakeside Alliance left him with nearly $4 million in losses and no company.
JB Pritzker attended the party and has not said one word about it since.
The Deal That Killed Adamson Plumbing
Owen's crew spent years on that campus – absorbing cost overruns, schedule disruptions, and a relentless parade of changes that nobody wanted to pay for.
When the opening was days away, Lakeside Alliance came to Owen with an offer.
Send two plumbers for last-minute night work at premium rates.
In exchange, $100,000 of the outstanding balance would arrive before the doors opened.
Owen agreed.
Against his better judgment, he sent the men.
The money never came.
"Not getting that large sum of money just kind of pulled the brakes on the train," Owen told Fox News Digital. "It was just the final death blow to the company."
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On June 25 – seven days after Stevie Wonder, Springsteen, Bono, John Legend, and Christina Aguilera performed for the Obamas, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Oprah, Gavin Newsom, and Nancy Pelosi – Owen suspended operations and handed pink slips to 25 workers.
The $100,000 arrived more than two weeks after that.
"It's almost like too little, too late," Owen said. "We're still deep in the hole of what they owe us."
Adamson has since vacated its building.
Owen is working from home, turning the dispute over to his attorneys and filing a $1.72 million mechanic's lien against the property – well below the $3.9 million he says the project cost his company.
"I'm not a litigious person," he said. "But our legal system is there to protect the small guy."
A $10 Land Deal, a Missing $470 Million, and a Billion-Dollar Tab
Adamson Plumbing is one story inside a much larger one.
The Obama Foundation secured 19.3 acres of Chicago's historic Jackson Park for a one-time payment of $10 under a 99-year lease.
Construction costs initially projected at roughly $350 million climbed to $830 million by 2021 and have since reportedly crossed $1 billion.
Taxpayers were promised protection.
The Obama Foundation pledged to build a $470 million reserve fund – a backstop if the center ever ran into financial trouble.
One million dollars has been deposited.
The fund is 0.2% funded.
Meanwhile, the legal bills pile up.
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The Concrete Collective is seeking more than $40 million in additional payment.
Two minority-owned firms – Glass Management Services and Vision Painting & Decorating Services – filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2024 after working on the project.
Now Adamson has filed its lien.
The center was sold to Chicago's South Side as an engine of opportunity for small and minority-owned businesses.
The businesses that actually built it are in court or closing their doors.
Pritzker Clapped at the Party and Has Not Said a Word Since
Here is what Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker did on June 18: he attended the opening ceremony alongside Oprah, Newsom, Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrat Party's celebrity class.
Here is what Pritzker did after 25 union workers lost their jobs at his party's most celebrated construction project: nothing.
Owen called it out directly.
"He hasn't said anything publicly about the union companies at the presidential center getting stiffed," Owen told Fox News. "And it bothers me."
Pritzker's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Owen knows what Democrat silence actually means.
If this were Elon Musk's project – if it were Ken Griffin's name on the building next door – Chicago's protest apparatus would have been running from day one.
"There would be holy hell to pay," Owen said. "They would be picketing. They would be storming the castle."
Instead: nothing.
The same coalition that has spent 50 years calling itself the party of labor found nothing worth saying.
That is not a contradiction.
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That is the policy.
Democrats protect the brand.
They protect the celebrities and the governors and the foundations with the famous names.
The workers who actually pour the concrete and run the pipe get the same treatment every time – a broken promise, a late check, and silence from every politician they voted for.
The Obama Foundation says its 15-day payment cycle exceeded industry standards.
Lakeside Alliance says "contractual closeout continues long after the doors have opened" on complex projects.
Mike Owen says they just don't care.
"It's become perfectly obvious to me that the ownership group there – they truthfully just don't care," he said. "I don't know any other way to say it."
The $469 million sitting unfunded in the taxpayer protection account nobody is asking about suggests he's onto something.
Sources:
- Michael Dorgan, "Obama Center subcontractor shuts down amid $4M fight, lays off 25," Fox News Digital, July 23, 2026.
- Michael Dorgan, "Subcontractors say they're owed millions, face financial ruin, after helping build Obama Presidential Center," Fox News Digital, June 17, 2026.
- Michael Dorgan, "Obama Presidential Center's $470M safety net under scrutiny as subcontractors say they're owed millions," Fox News Digital, June 13, 2026.
- Illinois Review, "Illinois Taxpayers Stuck With $175 Million Bill for Obama Center After Pledge of 'No Public Money,'" Illinois Review, January 16, 2026.