The proposed Eisenhower Memorial, as designed by Frank Gehry.

The 80-foot-tall metal tapestries that are supposed to rise above and frame the Frank Gehry-designed Eisenhower Memorial have been controversial from the get-go. But it’s not their look that critics are now focusing on, but rather whether they can withstand the elements.

A technical report released last week by the National Capital Planning Commission on the proposed (and hotly debated) memorial design found concerns with the welds that will hold up the tapestries, saying that corrosion may require that the tapestries be completely replaced every 100 years. Additionally, the report found, ice and snow could fall off of the tapestries onto pedestrians below, and the cost of maintaining them—$37.1 million over 50 years—may be too low.

In yet another delay for Gehry’s design, the NCPC again opted last week not to put the memorial’s design on the agenda for its March meeting. This is the third such delay of a critical part of the review and approval process—last June the design was pulled from the NCPC agenda so that U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar could review it, while it was later left off of the October agenda. The U.S. Commission on Fine Arts also hasn’t reviewed Gehry’s design.

Susan Eisenhower, the 34th president’s granddaughter, testified last year that the tapestries—which would feature images of Eisenhower’s childhood in Kansas—resembled similar structures used in communist countries. “Tapestries honoring Marx, Engels and Lenin used to hang in Red Square; Mao Zedong could be found in Tiananmen Square; and Ho Chi Minh’s tapestry hung from public buildings in Hanoi—to name a few,” she said.

The memorial is slated to cost $142 million and be completed by Memorial Day 2015.