As Project’s Costs and Delays Build, So Does Frustration

Two years into construction on a project the U.S. government hoped would offer taxpayers better access to the best civics lesson in the land, the officials in charge have found themselves receiving a lesson instead.

Lawmakers and project managers are scrambling for answers in the aftermath of an unofficial report by the Government Accountability Office given to members of the House Appropriations Committee last week. For the second time in two years, the GAO determined that the estimated cost of completing the Capitol Visitor Center -- the subterranean introduction to the workings of the nation’s legislature -- should be raised and the scheduled opening should be pushed back.

“It’s getting kind of frustrating,” said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. of Virginia, the ranking Democratic member of the Appropriations subcommittee on the legislative branch, which oversees funding for the project.

“We all scolded Boston for the Big Dig -- we thought it should be declared a national wildlife refuge for having the most cranes in the country,” he said, referring to that city’s troubled highway and parks project. “And now we look in our own backyard. It turns out to be a classic money pit.”

In its second cost analysis since construction began in July 2002, the GAO projected that the full installation of the cavernous visitor center would cost as much as $558.6 million -- more than double the initial estimate -- and would not be finished until late 2006. The new estimate adds more than $130 million to the current budget of $421 million. The previous expected completion date was the spring of 2006.

The leapfrogging economics of the project have been a part of the process since the ceremonial groundbreaking on June 20, 2000. At that time, construction costs were expected to total $265 million -- with a portion of the money to come from private funding -- and completion was scheduled for December 2005. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Congress added $38.5 million to the project’s budget for security upgrades, including a $10-million underground tunnel linking the Capitol and the Library of Congress.

Legislators then set aside $70 million more for expansion of House and Senate office spaces alongside the center. And last year an additional $48 million was approved to cover “unforeseen site conditions,” as requested by the Architect of the Capitol, Alan M. Hantman, whose office is responsible for the project.

“It’s time to reshuffle that office,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on the legislative branch. Kingston said “bad estimating” and “bad sequencing of contractors” between the first and second phases of the project were responsible for the overrun.

“When you build your house, you don’t have the painter come before the sheetrock’s done,” he said.

Not since the 330,000-square-foot additions to the House and Senate wings during the 1850s has the Capitol complex undergone such monumental renovation. Architects’ renditions of the new center depict a five-acre swath of land where lines of trees and broad boulevards funnel visitors -- who number about 12,000 a day, or 3.5 million a year -- into the new center, which falls in the afternoon shadow of the Capitol dome.

Meant to preserve the historic grounds crafted in 1874 by Frederick Law Olmsted, the celebrated landscape architect who helped design New York’s Central Park, the design of the center puts most of it underground, with 580,000 square feet on three levels for exhibits, theaters, food courts and extra office space for lawmakers.

Today, backhoes shuffle down 1st Street. An L crane partially blocks the view of the statue of Lady Freedom from her perch on the dome. While masons have paved much of the outdoor ground level with rose-colored granite bricks to ready the area for the president’s motorcade during January’s inaugural ceremonies, rain last week turned the site into a mud pit.

The truth about rising costs and longer delays in construction most likely lies on middle ground, a kind of “cumulative effect” brought on by congressional demands and “a complex orchestration of contractors,” said Tom Fontana, spokesman for the Architect of the Capitol’s office, during a tour of the construction site.

Bad weather was also a factor, he said, noting that rainfall last year was the second highest in the District of Columbia’s recorded history.

The construction project also had unanticipated difficulties. Maps and land surveys “were inaccurate and downright unreliable,” Fontana said. Last year, a crew working outside the office of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority whip, hit a century-old cistern buried 40 feet below the Capitol. Its removal delayed construction for two months.

In addition, workers outside could not forget who was inside. Crews had to keep a watchful eye on the schedule of Congress -- working nights, weekends and other periods when the House was out of session to keep the noise down. As construction began, they installed noise-deadening windowpanes -- at a cost of $350 million -- along the building’s east front.

“We still haven’t invented a jackhammer that’s quiet,” Fontana said.

Construction is slightly more than halfway done, he said. Work crews have laid the foundations and the steel-reinforced outer walls of the complex, but they have yet to begin the second phase of operations -- installing the center’s soon-to-be-scholarly interior.

The use of so many private contractors -- organized in a “ballet that has to be orchestrated just right for construction to continue” -- is necessary to preserve the “unique climate” of the Capitol, Fontana said.

In addition to the demolition crews, plumbers and electricians, the project has hired landscapers, who received $2 million to protect the site’s historic trees.

Kingston called it a waste.

“The taxpayers demand more and deserve more,” he said, “and I don’t think the architect has been a good steward of tax dollars.”

John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), praised the work that Hantman’s office had done to overcome obstacles and called into question the GAO’s accounting. GAO officials declined to comment, noting that their analysis was ongoing.

“I guess the first reaction is to shoot the messenger,” Moran said in response, “but I don’t know how fair that is.”