Photo by Kevin Wolf.

The National Park Service has awarded a contract for modernizing the Washington Monument to a local construction company, and says the site is slated to reopen in the spring of 2019.

Ongoing reliability issues with the 555-foot obelisk’s elevator has caused the closure of one of D.C.’s most iconic landmarks for more than a year.

Now, NPS has awarded Grunley Construction Company of Rockville a $10.785 million contract to complete two projects: repair, upgrade, and modernize the elevator, as well as build a new security screening building.

After the 2011 earthquake, the Washington Monument was closed to the public for three years for $15 million of restoration and preservation, it reopened to visitors in 2014. However, issues with the elevators continued, often leaving people stranded at the top of the building, forced to walk down all 896 steps to leave. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton interceded on several occasions, calling for a more permanent fix to what she has called the “most important elevator in the nation’s capital.”

The building closed indefinitely on August 17, 2016, after the elevator’s compensating cable broke loose from the car, briefly trapping the NPS employee on board and requiring 84 people, all employees, to take the stairs.

Billionaire businessman David M. Rubenstein donated $3 million towards giving the lift a boost, including a new elevator control system to coordinate service, which will have remote access.

When the monument when it reopens, visitors will enter through a new glass and steel security screening facility, built using funds from the National Park Service’s annual budget.

“The modernization should ensure seamless operation of the Monument’s elevator to keep a critical engine of our local economy up and running,” said Norton in a statement. “Americans, for whom the Monument is a tourist highlight, and particularly the District of Columbia, a tourist mecca, are deeply indebted to David Rubenstein for the funds for the elevator’s modernization, and I am indebted to my friends on the Appropriations Committee for providing the funds to construct a permanent screening center outside the Monument.”

Updated with a statement from Eleanor Holmes Norton.