For Starters, Mall Visitors Just Want More Bathrooms

"I am in tears when I walk up the Mall every day," said Jo-Ann Neuhaus, 64, who walks on it every day with her dog. Neuhaus, executive director of the Pennsylvania Quarter Neighborhood Association and an urban planner, said it's heartbreaking to compare the Mall with similar parks worldwide that are so much better maintained.

"To see this Mall represent this country in such bad shape: tears," she said.

Acknowledging problems is one step in the planning process, said Sara Cedar Miller, an historian with the Central Park Conservancy in New York.

"You have to get the facts out to the public," she told park officials yesterday.

"At lunch today, I learned about the rodent problem," she continued. When rats ran amok in New York's famed park, the conservancy took a tough, New York approach: "We put up signs in Central Park. We tried to scare people every day."

Softer tactics were suggested by Kym Murphy, the recently retired senior vice president of corporate environmental policy at Walt Disney Co.

Murphy urged the Park Service to use "innovative" ideas on the Mall, citing Disney's policy of hauling garbage not in trucks that everyone would see but through underground tunnels.

Mayhew, of the Cherry Blossom Festival, said she prefers methods so subtle they are imperceptible.

"We have to be the Disney World of D.C.," she said.