The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund yesterday recommended a parcel just to the west of the memorial as the site of a visitors center.
An advisory team chose the location over six others because it would provide the easiest access to the memorial, one of the most popular landmarks on the Mall, without disrupting pedestrian traffic or obstructing views of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
"There has been a need for a visitors center for a long time," said Jan C. Scruggs, memorial fund president.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"There has been a need for a visitors center for a long time," said Jan C. Scruggs, the founder and president of the memorial fund, at a news conference at the memorial. "Here's an opportunity to turn it into a powerful education experience for America's youth."
The leaders of the memorial fund have sought to build a visitors center for more than four years. As initially proposed, the center would have been above ground, a concept that prompted resistance from the National Park Service and led to the compromise of placing the center below ground.
In 2003, Congress passed a moratorium on new memorials and visitors centers on the main portion of the Mall, exempting the Vietnam memorial center, which is intended to tell the stories of the more than 58,000 names engraved on the black granite wall. The memorial fund's recommendation will be reviewed by the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission. The National Park Service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund have scheduled a public hearing Feb. 22 at the American Institute of Architects on New York Avenue NW.
Scruggs estimated that the building would cost $40 million, all to be raised privately. If the proposal is approved, he said, he expects groundbreaking in three years, followed by 18 to 24 months of construction.
Currently, two visitors centers exist on the Mall, inside the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. The legislation authorizing the center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial required that it be built "with the rationale that the existing historical sightlines remain intact," said Bill Line, a spokesman for the National Park Service. An underground visitors center is also being built near the U.S. Capitol.
Line said the Vietnam memorial visitors center's purpose would be to educate Americans about the war, particularly those born in the decades after its end.
"As time passes and as the Vietnam veteran generation becomes older, more people are not going to have firsthand direct knowledge of the war and what it was about," he said.
Judy Scott Feldman, the president of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, said the center would further develop land that should not be developed.
"The Mall is already overcrowded," she said, adding that the center's exhibits should be incorporated in a military museum.
From a field of 39, the memorial fund chose architect James Polshek to design the center, which would be located on the parcel bounded by 23rd Street, Henry Bacon Drive and Constitution Avenue NW. Polshek's list of designs includes Bill Clinton's recently opened presidential library in Little Rock.
"I wanted to be selected for this very, very badly," Polshek said at the news conference, adding that his primary mission will be to "assure the sanctity" of the memorial.
The memorial fund evaluated seven sites for the visitors center, including four that were rejected because they were more than a 10-minute walk from the memorial. Two would have required visitors to cross busy thoroughfares.
Another site, a couple of hundred yards to the east of the memorial, was ruled out because it would have been set in the middle of the park where visitors often congregate after visiting the memorial.
"Introducing hundreds of people into the middle of the park is not good for the park," said James Cummings, an architect who headed the advisory committee that conducted the review.
The site the committee chose fulfilled all of the project's requirements -- that it not interfere with the views of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.
