Sparklefarts the Swindler?

Anyone surprised? (paywalled article over at Crain's)

• The Obama Presidential Center has been touted as a launching pad for jobs and workforce development on the South Side. But some of the local contractors hired to help build it say they are paying the price for the project’s delays and cost overruns.

  Several subcontractors on the nearly finished $850 million campus say they are quietly fighting to collect millions of dollars in unpaid bills for completed work and are being pushed to the financial brink, providing a new window into the fallout from the center’s widely reported construction issues.

  The companies, including several established minority-led firms, allege a portion of the unforeseen costs on a project that came in hundreds of millions of dollars over its original estimated budget has been pushed onto them and other small contractors least able to afford them — jeopardizing jobs and the future of some businesses the historic project was designed to elevate.

  Their claims reveal a hidden human cost of the project’s inflated price tag and threaten to spoil the legacy of one of the highest-profile developments in the city’s history.

Any updates on that $470 million maintenance fund that was only funded with a single million dollars? Chicago taxpayers are looking down the barrel of a $469 million shortfall that is 100% unaffordable.