Plan for WWII Memorial in Capital OKd

The National Capital Planning Commission, in a 9-3 vote Thursday, approved a proposal to place a World War II memorial on a 5.5-acre site between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

The vote set the stage for President Clinton to dedicate the site in November. The memorial might be completed by the year 2000.

“What better year to dedicate a memorial to the defining event of the 20th Century?” asked F. Haydn Williams of the American Battle Monuments Commission. He said the commission now will begin to raise money “in earnest,” with a goal of about $100 million.

The planning commission insisted that the memorial “not visually intrude upon the open area” at the center of the site--namely, the “rainbow pool” now there and strips of land about 50 feet wide on its north and south sides.

This means, in effect, that the vertical elements of the memorial, still undetermined, will be confined to the north and south edges with the pool, in some form, as a link. The possibility of some underground portion will also be studied.