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Scope, cost of U.S. Capitol welcome center continue to grow

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) Visitors to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol these days must wend their way around a noisy construction zone and an excavation big enough for an ocean liner.

A vast and very secure new underground welcome center for Capitol visitors will fill the void by 2005, if all goes as planned. But little has matched expectations so far, particularly when it comes to cost. Some lawmakers contend that the project, already $100 million over its 1999 estimated budget, has the makings of a classic congressional money pit.

Certainly, it's a pricey undertaking. The Tennessee Pink marble for flooring and decorative details costs up to $200 a cubic foot, depending on how it's cut and finished. For historic trees that frame the site, the cost of keeping them alive during construction already tops $1.3 million. And the scope of the project keeps growing, the most expensive addition being $70 million for new subterranean House and Senate offices added after the design's initial approval.

Because it's part of the Capitol, the Visitor Center needs to be impressive, said Alan Hantman, the congressionally appointed Architect of the Capitol, whose office is in charge of the project. "We're trying to make sure that it's of a quality that says we are a great country. . . . This is the people's house."

The center, sunk three stories below ground, will house a 600-seat cafeteria, two theaters showing orientation videos, a 400-seat auditorium and gift shops. A service tunnel will bring deliveries in and garbage out unobtrusively, allowing security screening at a safe distance from the Capitol.

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Above ground, strollers will see a serene, tree-lined pedestrian plaza true to the vision of Frederick Law Olmstead, American's premier public landscaper, who gave the Capitol grounds their last facelift in 1874. Skylights built into the plaza (the center's roof) will give a worm's eye - and air-conditioned - view of the Capitol dome to the 7,000 or more daily visitors.

"It's a monumental project in every respect," said John Barron of Manhattan Construction, the Dallas-based contractor hired to build the structure.

Only Las Vegas hotels take a comparable spare-no-expense approach, according to Barron. "It's very substantial construction: the best marble that you can find in this country, tiles, bronze doors."

Matching the Capitol Visitor Center stone to the Capitol's - so that "a generation from now, people will think it has always been here," as Hantman puts it - is what requires the fancy marble known as Tennessee Pink. It was used as well for the Lincoln Memorial, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and Philadelphia's city hall. Today, one company owns the only two active quarries producing Tennessee Pink, prized for its density, color and durability.

"Memorial trees" planted over the years to honor famous lawmakers also are getting the no-expense-spared treatment. Eight of the 99 were transplanted, including the 92-ton Liberty Tree "seedling," the offspring of a 400-year old Annapolis, Md., tulip poplar, given by former Sen. Charles Mathias, R-Md. Transplanting it took eight days. Six other memorial trees had to be removed and will be replaced.

In 1999, Congress authorized $265 million for the new center. Comptroller General David Walker now estimates that post-9-11 security upgrades and unexpected contingencies will bring the cost to between $380 million and $395 million - and that doesn't count the $70 million for building out new underground office space for lawmakers.

If the accounting sounds a little airy, that's not unusual for Congress's monumental construction projects. The Hart Senate Office Building, estimated in 1972 to cost $48 million, wound up costing $138 million when finished a decade later.

The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Pennsylvania Avenue, estimated in 1987 to cost $362 million, cost $818 million by its opening in 1997.

It's too early to get a good fix on the center's costs. Only about 250,000 cubic yards of hallowed Capitol Hill dirt have been removed thus far - some ending up as landfill for an Ikea outlet in Maryland. There are another 250,000 to go.

Already a number of unexpected costs have come up. A harsh winter and wet spring slowed excavators of the 50-foot deep hole. Hundred-year-old maps and underground utility diagrams proved inaccurate. Presidential and vice-presidential visits to Capitol Hill required work stoppages for security reasons.

Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is worried about the cost. Obey wrote Capitol Architect Hantman this spring that he was "deeply disturbed at the prospect of pouring more money into this project when expenses are already running well above budget and there is no solid assurance as to what the project will ultimately cost."

Jeff Bruner, a Capitol visitor from New Belin, Wis., takes a sanguine view.

"It's part of Americana," he shrugged. "We waste money in a lot of other ways, too."

___

For more on the visitor center, go to

http://www.aoc.gov/cvc/cvc(underscore)overview.htm<

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