September 1, 2009
Dear Coalition Friends:
This Thursday, September 3, the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) will review plans by the National Park Service to renovate the Lincoln Memorial's Reflecting Pool. The plan includes refurbishing the Pool itself, improving the quality of the (filthy) water, adding paved walkways along the Pool where visitors have worn a dirt path, and completing security barriers where the Pool meets the steps leading up to the Lincoln Memorial, now protected by temporary concrete blocks.
This project is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and is the largest ARRA-funded project being undertaken by the Park Service in the nation.
The National Coalition to Save Our Mall fully supports the much-needed renovation. Yesterday, we spent two hours at the Reflecting Pool with representatives of the National Park Service, federal agencies, and nonprofit groups reviewing the proposed changes.
We continue to raise strong concerns, however, that major projects such as this are being designed, funded, and implemented without benefit of a comprehensive, long-range visionary plan for the entire National Mall. Federal agencies are planning only for their parts of the Mall -- not the entire Mall which is managed by six federal agencies with oversight by fourteen committees in Congress -- and winning approvals from other federal agencies, despite this piecemeal approach.
However, whatever is designed now at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool -- encompassing the vast landscape between the Lincoln Memorial and World War II Memorial -- will establish standards in landscape, materials, public use policies that could impact the development and refurbishment of the rest of the Mall. That is why we continue to call on Congress and the President to recognize the urgent need for a 3rd Century Mall Vision for the entire National Mall that serves the larger public interest, which can be created by an independent, term-limited National Mall Commission. Such a Commission could complete its work within two years, at a cost estimated at less than $2 million.
During the public consultation meeting and in written comments regarding the Reflecting Pool plan, we have asked the National Park Service and the reviewing agencies to look beyond repairing the status quo to consider additional improvements -- and necessary changes in public use policy -- that would restore aspects of public enjoyment lost in recent years. Historical photographs show people ice staking on the Pool from the time it opened in the 1920s, and children sailing toy boats. This would require restoring policies that allow ice skating on the Pool (and maybe adding freezer coils, an idea proposed by a local architect decades ago, to much acclaim).
If you wish to testify, you must call NCPC and sign up by tomorrow, Wednesday, at noon -- 202-482-7200. For more information and to read the Executive Director's Recommendation for the project.
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