Barack and Michelle Obama break ground on presidential library in Chicago

More than four years after leaving office, Barack Obama broke ground on Tuesday on his presidential center on the South Side of Chicago, a legacy project that has been bogged down by a lengthy discord over its use of a public park and its potential impact on a historically neglected part of the city.

In a ceremony that was scaled down because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Obama and Michelle Obama, the former first lady, scooped up dirt with commemorative shovels at the 19-acre site in Jackson Park, near the shores of Lake Michigan.

Joining the Obamas for the groundbreaking, which was streamed online, were Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago.

Mr. Obama who left office in January 2017, said that the presidential center would become a catalyst for job growth and economic development in the place where he came of age as a politician, husband and father. The project, he said, would also turn Chicago’s South Side into a destination not just for people to learn about his presidency but also for future leaders.

“Chicago is where I found the purpose that I had been seeking,” said Mr. Obama, who in 2008 became the first Black person elected to the U.S. presidency.

“We want this center to be more than a static museum or a source of archival research,” Mr. Obama said. “It won’t just be a collection of campaign memorabilia or Michelle’s ball gowns, although I know everybody will come see those. It won’t just be an exercise in nostalgia or looking backwards. We want to look forward.”

Construction of the presidential center, whose estimated price tag has soared from initial projections of $500 million.