Talk about killing the things we love: 25 million visitors grind their way across the National Mall
in Washington, D.C. each year as marches, concerts, movies, and festivals continue to throng its
elm lined expanse. Meanwhile, the cost of deferred maintenance around its museums and
memorials by the National Park Service has reached $350 million. Tourists who expect the shimmering
greenswards they've sen on postcards instead find hardpan dirt, and, by the way, where's the nearest
decent bathroom?
The problem is, the Mall's funding shortfall is an insignificant fraction of the $5 billion needed to restore
all the National Park Service-run sites around the country. So as the Park Service puts finishing touches on a
30-year management plan for the Mall that will be released later this year, two citizen-led groups are
agitating for more tender loving care toward the space that known as America's Front Lawn, with markedly
differently views about the problem.
One group, the Trust for the National Mall, began work in the 2004 and is led by the Washington developer
Chip Akridge. Last fall, the Trust became the Park Service's "official" fundraising partner, modeling
itself on New York's Central Park Conservancy. When the Park Service does release its final Mall
plan (a draft proposal drew 23,000 citizen comments in January 2008), the trust intends to launch a campaign to
raise $500 million for improved infrastructure, amenities, and signage around the Mall. "We want all of
America to be involved, from school children to trillionaires," Akridge said. "Our mission is to support
the mission of the Park Service."
But the Park Service's mission isn't nearly broad enough, according to Judy Scott Feldman, who in 2000
founded the other group, the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, which has set up its own fundraising
outfit called the National Mall Conservancy (also based on the Central Park model). "The Park
Services is very good at taking care of wilderness parks, but not good in urban parks," Feldman said.
"They're trying to get people off the Mall to protect its resources." Feldman's group is urging the
Park Service to balance conservation of the Mall with its heavy human uses.
Feldman's group has produced a guide to recreation on the Mall and is currently working on recycling
and educational programs for the area. In April, the coalition plans to issue a report calling for a new panel
resembling the City Beautiful-inspired McMillan Commission of 1901-02, which outlined
Mall as we know it today. A new commission would take a comprehensive approach to the Mall
and its surroundings, Feldman said, bringing in the Smithsonian and the Architect of the Capitol,
whose territories dovetail all around the Mall. The Park Service, she said, isn't interested
in such a commission because it would infringe on its turf. She believes the efforts of Akridge's
can only help in the long run:
"The more people interested in the Mall, the better."
