Design issues surrounding the Columbia Island great plaza were resolved in late 1931 not by the CFA, but by President Herbert Hoover. Two airfields, Hoover Field and Washington Airport, existed in Virginia just south of Columbia Island. In the spring of 1931, AMBC executive officer Ulysses S. Grant III (then a lieutenant colonel with the Corps of Engineers) advised the AMBC and CFA that the huge memorial columns planned for Columbia Island would be a risk to aviation. Both bodies ignored him.