King memorial seeks funding to meet new costs

By Brett Zongker ASSOCIATED PRESS | Thursday, August 14, 2008

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Organizers for building the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Mall said Tuesday they need more money to meet increasing construction costs and to pay for a bookstore, which is being added over the objection of critics.

Organization members said this week they need to raise $20 million more to reach the total cost of $120 million. The money also is needed to pay for security enhancements required by the National Park Service and restrooms in the same building as the bookstore.

Verizon Communications is relocating communication lines beneath the proposed site on the banks of the Tidal Basin, between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. The site preparation is the beginning of "the first major memorial to honor a man of peace and person of color on the National Mall," said Harry Johnson, president of the memorial foundation.

Critics of plans to add the bookstore say the Mall is becoming overcrowded.

"The Park Service needs restrooms, and this is how they're getting them," said Judy Scott Feldman, chairman of the nonprofit National Coalition to Save Our Mall. She said the ballooning scope of the King memorial is similar to a visitor center that will be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The Park Service says the site's footprint has gotten smaller since a previous design was reviewed in 2005.

Further construction must wait until two commissions that oversee the capital's architecture approve the design.

The approval timing is critical because congressional permission for the memorial expires in November. If construction has not begun by then, the foundation may have to go back to Congress for an extension.

Organizers hope to complete the memorial in 2010, after originally planning it for 2009.

Surrounded by cherry trees, the memorial will feature a 28-foot "Stone of Hope" granite sculpture of King, a waterside plaza and celebrated quotes by the civil rights leader engraved in stone walls.

It would be the first major tribute to the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner outside Atlanta, where King was born in 1929.

Also Tuesday, the group announced a $3 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The announcements come as the project closes in on its initial $100 million fundraising goal, collecting $98.8 million so far.

Plans for the bookstore were approved in July by the National Capital Planning Commission, which opposed adding security bollards, saying they would disrupt the design.

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