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| | | Park Service plan ponders monumental changes to Mall | | January 06, 2010 | | | | Staff Writer | | Years in the making and with a potential price tag of $705 million, a massive draft plan released last week contemplates renovation and restoration of the battered National Mall.
Citizens have until March 18 to weigh in on the potential for sweeping alterations to the face of the Mall. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton plans to be one of those contributors.
"I would call it basics but basics of a very critical kind, because you can't just look at the Mall as a place that needs the grass cut," Norton said of the plan. She said the agency is proposing to tackle many long-deferred problems.
"People act as if 20 million people don't come here a year," she added.
Park Service officials said they want to hear more about how they should prioritize activities on the Mall.
"This is absolutely the time for the general public ... to weigh in," said Park Service spokesperson Bill Line. "Do you want it to look green and lush and somewhat Emerald City-like? Do you want special events there? Because if you do ... then the likelihood is that it will be difficult to have the eastern end of the Mall look as green as it might."
Norton said she wants the Park Service to look at short-term improvements as well as long-term plans. Fixes such as adding bathrooms and bringing in lunchtime string quartets would improve the situation immediately, she said.
"People treat the Mall as a pass-through. You get from one Smithsonian to another Smithsonian that way. What a waste," she said.
Though the Park Service released five possible plans for the area of the Mall it controls, the "preferred alternative" includes:
• paving the gravel sidewalks of the Mall with a "low-maintenance, sustainable and universally accessible" material;
• replacing the soil with "engineered" soil that would stand up better to intensive use, and discouraging special events such as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival from being held on the Mall's eastern grassy portions;
• constructing a below-grade multipurpose facility on the Washington Monument grounds at the northwest corner of 15th Street and Independence Avenue, which would replace the temporary tent that is currently near that site, and would offer food service, retail, displays, restrooms and performance space;
• decreasing the size of the reflecting pool on the west side of the Capitol to allow more space for both demonstrations and a flexible indoor/outdoor space for viewing the Capitol and the nearby Ulysses S. Grant Memorial;
• building a paved "welcome plaza" at 12th Street and Jefferson Drive SW, which would host a large model or pavement map of the Mall;
• rebuilding the Constitution Gardens pond near Constitution Avenue NW to make it self-sustaining, and possibly providing fishing or model boating activities at the pond;
• rebuilding the seawalls at the Tidal Basin and creating a "sense of arrival" there by redesigning parking and pedestrian paths; and
• creating a "sustainable, vegetated shoreline" along the banks of the West Potomac Park riverfront, possibly with areas for seating, fishing, canoe- or kayak-launching and a water-taxi service.
This "preferred alternative" is a combination of three themed plans that also contain more drastic suggestions.
One, concentrating on the historic nature of the Mall, would retain the gravel walkways and ban temporary event stages and tents on vast swaths of the Mall. In this scenario, the Mall's carousel would be removed "to restore the historic scene," according to the report.
Another, based on making the mall "a welcoming civic space" for "high use levels," suggests removing the Capitol reflecting pool entirely to further increase space for demonstrations and create room for a building with performance space. This plan calls for installing resilient hard spaces at spots around the Mall to accommodate crowds and constructing an underground paid parking garage between 12th and 15th streets.
Yet another alternative focuses on utilizing the Mall as a vast recreation space. The Capitol reflecting pool would become an interactive water feature, playgrounds would be added and 14th Street traffic would be diverted to an underground tunnel to allow for pedestrian access and safety.
Aside from the "no-build" plan -- which would maintain the Mall's infrastructure largely as it is today -- all the plans call for more restrooms and food vending, some kind of redesign of the Capitol reflecting pool plaza and efforts to maintain the Mall's grass with new soil, grass and/or turf. The Park Service also plans to work with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to add "National Mall" to the name of the Smithsonian Metro stop.
Although the Park Service is calling for citizens to comment at nps.gov/nationalmallplan and had already received 30,000 comments before the draft plan was published, some organizations dedicated to preserving and expanding the Mall have complained that their suggestions were ignored.
The nonprofit National Coalition To Save Our Mall, which has frequently disagreed with the Park Service's initiatives, asked for a multitude of changes that were not included in the draft plans. Specifically, organization president Judy Scott Feldman said suggestions to increase transportation options to, from and around the Mall were brushed off.
The plan does include a promise to work with the transportation authority, ideas for tour bus parking, and plans to further use Tourmobiles, but Feldman said those options are not sufficient and that Mall transportation shouldn't be based on commercial entities like Tourmobile.
"How do the disabled get to the Mall? What do you do when you have an elderly relative? How do you get them to the Lincoln Memorial? It doesn't serve everyday visitors," she said.
Her group has also asked Congress to create a National Mall commission to govern any changes, since the National Park Service does not control the multitude of government buildings and museums that line the Mall.
Despite misgivings, Feldman said the plan contains "plenty of good ideas."
Line expects the plan to finalized by the fall, though there is no timeline for construction. Congress has contributed some funding to Mall fixes, but most of the proposed work would be funded by private money.
Norton also said she plans to introduce legislation soon to give the National Capital Planning Commission the power to expand the boundaries of the Mall and to implement its memorial plan, which she said will go beyond "just the physical approach to planning the Mall" the Park Service has done. | | | | | Log in to comment on this article |
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