Billionaire David Rubenstein Gives 18 5 Million To Lincoln Memorial Renovation

The contribution was made by Rubenstein directly to the National Park Foundation, and it’s a healthy enough donation to fund nearly the entire project, which is set to be completed sometime in 2019. Here’s Will Shafroth, president of the National Park Foundation, in a statement about the donation: That excerpt leaves out the 15,000 square feet of educational space that will also be installed under the memorial, which will include classrooms and various exhibits related to Lincoln and the Lincoln Memorial itself. Most intriguingly, the renovations will allow members of the public to see graffiti that was left by the construction workers who built the Lincoln Memorial back in 1922, preserved but hidden ever since. It’s the largest contribution yet made by Rubenstein to the national parks, but not the first. In 2012, he made a contribution of $7.5 million to help repair another famous DC landmark, the Washington Monument, after that 2011 earthquake, and just last month, he contributed $10 million to the soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC. It’s all part of Rubenstein’s pattern of giving, and he can certainly afford to be this generous, with a net worth of $3 billion, a fortune made largely from having co-founded the controversial Carlyle Group, with help from his myriad political connections in Washington. But donations like this one, examples of what he has referred to in the past as “patriotic giving,” are the opposite of controversial and have been made to causes almost anybody can get behind. As for the renovation itself, the Park Service is kicking in a relatively measly $800,000 for the project, and the latest budget from the White House also includes a request for another $2.2 million to help bring it to completion. Hopefully, no one will sweat a measly $3 million when David Rubenstein donated $18.5 million all on his own.