National Mall may finally get a face-lift

The National Mall, home to monuments and museums, has seen better days.

The sidewalks are cracked, tourists have complained. The bathrooms are unpleasant. The security fences are just plain ugly. Parking is hard to find. And the footsteps of 25 million visitors each year erode the grassy expanses between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.

There have been a few nips and tucks over the years, but the Mall hasn’t had a major face-lift in more than a century. That might be about to change with Wednesday’s announcement of a National Park Service campaign to determine the future of the 2-mile-long open space in the center of the nation’s capital.

“The National Mall is the nation and the world’s frontyard, so it should be no surprise that there are challenges for us to take care of,” said Park Service spokesman Bill Line. “This is about the American public weighing in and telling us how we can improve things and allow the Mall to serve everyone better.”

Judy Scott Feldman, chairwoman of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, said the campaign’s impact would probably be small, as the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the District of Columbia among others had overlapping jurisdictions on the Mall.

“What is really needed is for an independent commission to bring all of these agencies together to create a master plan,” she said.

Feldman urged the creation of something similar to the McMillan Senate Park Commission Plan, named after Sen. James McMillan of Michigan, who in 1901 and 1902 led a committee that developed plans for the Mall and for the District of Columbia’s park system.

The Park Service’s effort starts Nov. 15 with a symposium involving landscape architects, city planners, turf consultants and other experts. The public can contribute thoughts at www.nps.gov/nationalmallplan.

Over the next few months, Line said, officials will cull the public remarks to create several proposals and then a single plan.

moises.mendoza@latimes.com