<p>When the Obama Presidential Center opens next month, and its funders are honored and congratulated, there are two major financial contributors worthy of a bow or two: Chicago and Illinois taxpayers.</p><p>The Chicago Department of Transportation said it has spent $123.3 million since 2022 on capital projects aimed at remaking the roadways and green space in Jackson Park and around the center.</p><p>And there's still more work to be done. The final public infrastructure costs are likely to approach $200 million.</p><p>The costs are not part of the presidential center's privately-funded $850 million price tag.</p><p>"The Chicago Department of Transportation has delivered a series of roadway and mobility improvements in and around Jackson Park in coordination with the Obama Presidential Center," CDOT said in a statement to the Sun-Times.</p><p>One major change included ripping up a half-mile of Cornell Drive between Midway Plaisance and Hayes Drive. The center's landscape architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, turned what was an obtrusive six-lane highway ripping through Jackson Park into walkable green space that links the Obama campus to the park's historic lagoon to the east.</p><p>Other projects included adding a third southbound lane on DuSable Lake Shore Drive between 57th and Hayes drives; reworking Hayes Drive east of Stony Island Avenue that involved reconfiguring intersections at Cornell, Richards and DuSable Lake Shore drives; and adding a pump station to help fix flooding at the 59th Street pedestrian underpass.</p><p>CDOT also built three pedestrian underpasses in the park.