Federal Drive

President’s Park: from pit to paradise?

Five proposals have been submitted \"to beautify the security components and improve the visitor experience at President\'s Park South.\" Now it\'s your turn - ...

Federal News Network Staff

June 24, 2011 10:41 am

2 min read

wfedstaff | June 4, 2015 7:42 am

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By Suzanne Kubota
Senior Internet Editor
FederalNewsRadio.com

Architects have offered up five proposals for improving the park near the White House, but before the final decision is made, your opinion is needed.

The goal is to improve the look and feel of President’s Park South, including the Ellipse, near the White House.

While the public can access the area now, “it’s not a great experience and that’s the problem,” Bill Dowd, director of the physical planning division at the National Capital Planning Commission, told Federal News Radio.

The improvements, he said, are “part of a larger initiative by the Secret Service and the Park Service to find a better way to reduce the impact of security in this park.”

After narrowing the competition down to five designers and teams, Dowd said the commission gave five criteria to competitors:

Incorporate effective security as defined by the Secret Service,
Minimize conflicts between the necessary traffic and pedestrians (visitors),
Create an “attractive environment that isn’t dominated by security elements,”
Preserve the historic integrity of the park, and
Do not preclude the possibility of reintroducing traffic along E street “if and when that becomes a solution in the future.”

The teams were given six weeks to come up with ideas. Now, the submitted plans will be considered by the Secret Service and the Park Service “as they develop their ultimate proposal for how to repair or improve this park,” said Dowd.

“There are great ideas in all five of them and so what we would love to hear is the public’s opinion on which of those concepts they think would be good or which of the aspects of those concepts we ought to retain.”

The concepts will be formally presented by the firms next Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. The public is invited to participate and share opinions at that meeting as well. Dowd said if you can’t make it to the meeting, you can watch it, live, streamed on NCPC’s website.

The competition winner will be announced on Thursday, June 30, 2011.