Thank you, Bob, for this important piece.

It will be interesting to see if the NPS and Save Ellis Island, Inc., will be able to restore all the structures on the south side of Ellis Island.

One question I have relates to the feasibility of the timetable. You mention the time horizon available to restore the buildings after the stabilization work of serveral years ago: you say:

"SEI’s immediate concern was to get the 30 buildings stabilized with emergency repairs costing more than $8 million. Then the restoration work could proceed over a period of 10-15 years."

I followed that stabilization process pretty closely at the time. Although the NPS leadership in Washington did NOT put those stabilization funds in the budget, in another demonstration of the need of congressional intervention in the budget process, these stabilization funds were added to the NPS budget by Congress over the objections of the NPS Comptroller.

The NPS preservation architect in charge, who DID support the stabilization project, said that everybody better pay attention, because only 10 years after those poured-concrete buildings were stabilized, they will have deteriorated again to the sorry condition they were at, before the stabilization. In other words, don't even bother to do the stabilization unless you can move quickly to go to full restoration. Years have passed since then, and I am not sure how much time is really available.

An earlier superintendent of Statue of Liberty/Ellis had actually opposed the restoration (it actually seemed he just didn't believe he could ever get all the money together), and suggested a "managed ruin" would be a better idea.

One NPS guy said the problem with the latest campaign is, that in the original campaign, NPS had "sold" that preserving the north side would be preserving Ellis; NPS had never communicated effectively to the public what was so necessary about preserving the south side.

Sort of like, the big original fundraising had been to "save" Ellis, save that significant story of turn-of-the-century immigration, and that had been done in the public mind. Think of all the movies around the time of that fund-raising effort, Godfather II being only one of many.

The new restoration needs a phrase to capture the public's imagination, in the same kind of sense of what ADDITIONALLY can be added to America's story by working on those other buildings.

Thank you Bob for this effort to frame the significance of this restoration effort.