Park Service pushes plan to build beneath Washington Monument.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Approaching the Washington Monument can be a powerful, moving experience. A visitor ascending grassy hills to the monument's front door can relish a spectacular view of all that the National Mall has to offer-its unique blend of things historic and natural.
That treasured experience is threatened, however, by a National Park Service (NPS) proposal to build an underground visitor center (with a 500-foot-long tunnel leading up to it) and walled walkways around the monument. Critics say the proposal, which the Park Service touts in the name of security, will waste money, harm the area, fail to protect visitors, and short-circuit opportunities for citizen involvement in the process.
"The National Park Service is rushing headlong with an ill-conceived plan that will do nothing to improve security and will deface rather than enhance the monument," said Judy Feldman, Chairman of the Coalition to Save Our Mall.
Said Joy Oakes, NPCA's Mid-Atlantic regional director: "The monument is a site rich in beauty and meaning, deserving the highest level of scrutiny and care, not a hastily adopted proposal."
The plan would expand the monument lodge at 15th Street-currently a souvenir and snack shop with restrooms -and link it to the 500-foot-long tunnel through which visitors would enter the monument and go through security screenings. A walled walkway about 30 inches high would encircle the monument, replacing concrete barriers that were placed there to bolster security.
John Parsons, associate director of the Park Service's National Capital Region, said that screenings in an underground visitor center and walled walkways are now necessary because the monument could be a terrorist target.
"The potential for a takeover of the monument is very real," he said. "After several discussions, we concluded that the only way to really protect the monument without impeding visitors' freedom to walk around the monument is to have a structure underground."
Critics, however, contend that the walkways, 800-feet wide, would impede the ability of people to move freely on the Mall, and that congregating in an underground visitor center and tunnel could actually pose greater risks to visitors in the hypothetical event of a bombing or armed attack.
In April, the Coalition sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton that asked her to block consideration of the plan. Weeks later, the National Capital Planning Commission gave preliminary approval to the expansion of the stone lodge that would become the entrance to an underground visitor center. NPS hopes to gain final approval and begin construction by August.
Of particular concern to some is the Park Service's failure to consider alternative proposals or give the public a chance to comment. In a recent letter to the Coalition, NPS wrote, "the details are security-sensitive and will not be available for public review."
"If the goal is to secure and protect the monument, there must be real alternatives," said Oakes, "but so far the Park Service is not looking at them.
"Any project related to the Mall should be done thoroughly," she added, "with more care and with more public involvement than is evident so far."
The idea of an underground visitor center has been one advocated by the Park Service for more than 30 years. Ironically, the engineers working on the current project for the Park Service also examined similar plans in 1973. Then, they said that proposal was "expensive and oppressive" and would rob visitors of the experience of viewing the Mall while waiting to enter the monument.
"This proposal is a 30-year-old plan for a visitor center that Congress never funded," said Feldman. "Now the Park Service is trying to retrofit it as a security measure and ram it through."
The cost of the Park Service's proposal is estimated at more than $30 million, not including the cost of the tunnel. If the project is approved, the Park Service will still need to address some logistical concerns, such as whether the monument's foundation, with its uneven soils, can support an underground facility.
Critics have advocated screening visitors at the monument's entrance or at another nearby location, a plan that could provide immediate protection with less cost and harm to the area. Others see a tunnel as one more project for a National Mall that they say has become increasingly cluttered.
"Where does it stop?" said Oakes. "Part of the power of the memorials on the Mall is the surrounding open space and the visual connections among them. Making the Mall as cluttered as grandma's attic diminishes its power."
