text: 1961 and 1962 William Whipple Jr., the fair's chief engineer, said in September 1960 that exhibitors would be able to begin erecting pavilions by 1962. Construction of the first building, an administration structure, began in August 1960 and was finished in January 1961. In early 1961, almost all of Flushing Meadows–Corona Park was closed to accommodate the fair's construction, and the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)'s World's Fair station opened. Workers also moved trees and diverted parts of the Flushing River into tunnels. By April 1961, thirty-four countries had accepted invitations to the fair, and the city agreed to spend $24 million improving the park. Moses obtained additional funds secretively from the city government; according to Moses's biographer Robert Caro, the city government may have spent as much as $60 million on the fair.The WFC announced in May that it would proceed with the planned amusement area around Meadow Lake, hiring the billionaire H. L. Hunt to operate the rides. By mid-1961, the WFC had privately raised $25 million and was predicting a $53 million profit. The groundbreaking ceremony for the first 1964 Fair pavilion took place that June. The WFC struggled to sell the remaining bonds and had sold around $30 million in promissory notes (three-fourths of the total) by the end of 1961. During the fair's construction, civil-rights activists expressed concerns that that the WFC's leadership included very few African Americans. Even after Moses met with activists, he still did not appoint African Americans to leadership positions, which attracted controversy amid the ongoing civil rights movement. The WFC eventually hired an African American executive to the fair's international division in 1962. Later that year, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller formed a committee to investigate persistent complaints about discrimination within the WFC.