Capitol Visitor Center Debut Again Delayed

But the project has had staunch supporters in Congress and draws more as it nears completion.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), after touring the site for the first time recently, remarked last week: "It's really a magnificent space. . . . I was more than impressed."

The idea for such a facility goes back decades, based mainly on a wish to accommodate visitors who had to wait outside in all kinds of weather for tours, officials said.

In 1998, when a deranged Illinois man burst into the Capitol with a revolver and killed Capitol Police officer Jacob J. Chestnut and Detective John M. Gibson, Congress decided it also needed a secure place where visitors could be screened.

With the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings and the still-unsolved anthrax attacks soon after, government officials knew the visitor center would need even more security.

Ceremonial groundbreaking was held in June 2000, and excavation began in July 2002. Already, the project had expanded. From the beginning, more than a quarter of the complex was set aside as "shell space" to be used someday by the House and Senate. But officials realized that it would be cheaper to fill in the shell space right away rather than go back later.

Congress appropriated funding to outfit the space in 2001. The designs were completed in 2003, and work began in 2005.

The House got, among other things, a regal two-story hearing room in its wing, said D. Rodman Henderer, a senior vice president with the Baltimore architectural firm RTKL, which designed the center.

The Senate wanted a series of small hearing rooms on its side, along with a huge TV-radio studio, complete with makeup facilities, for senators to create messages they could send to constituents, Henderer said.

Both efforts added substantially to the project's growing workload and at least $85 million to its cost.

The public sector of the center already was large.

"Most people . . . think that a visitor center is going to be some kiosks with some pamphlets on it, some restrooms and maybe some vending machines," said project executive Robert C. Hixon Jr.