Estella Solomons. Bender eventually stopped sending further objects to the museum when the room, to which he had donated over 250 items, was reported to him as full by Mahr in 1937. 1988–present In December 1988, the Irish government made the decision to close Collins Barracks as a military facility, and in 1993 an agreement was reached for the NMI to take possession of the site as a new museum campus. This was part of a wider plan to rejuvenate a neglected and deprived area of Dublin city spanning 270 acres between Collins Barracks and O'Connell Street. This area was designated as part of the Historic Area Rejuvenation Project (HARP), with the museum being the central piece of a new "museum quarter". Included in this plan was the construction of the new Luas line which would create easier public transport links to not only the new museum in Collins Barracks, but to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham. Over the course of three years, the Office of Public Works developed and refurbished the site for the museum at the cost of £15 million. The development of this new museum site led to the drafting of the NMI's first strategic plan. The museum opened in 1997, with both exhibition and storage spaces for the collections that were relocated from Kildare Street and other storage buildings. This resulted in the display of some objects for the first time in decades. A lecture theatre, restaurant, and education rooms were also created. The site also is the location of the museum's conservation lab, and main offices for the documentation department. In the first year of opening, the museums saw 200,000 visitors. The opening of this new museum site also saw a marked expansion in the educational department of the museum across all of its sites. The museum was officially opened in its first phase in September 1997 by Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Síle de Valera. The adaptation and development of the museum has led to a number of phased building projects. These included a collaboration between the Office of Public Works and the Gilroy McMahon architectural firm to redevelop the western and southern ranges of the main Palatine Square into exhibition spaces for the museum, and for which they were awarded the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland silver medal for conservation in 2002. This involved converting