COMPANY NEWS, EVENT INDUSTRY
I wanted to share a great piece on the restoration of the National Mall that appeared in todays USA Today. Click Here for the full article. This will absolutely impact events and work moving forward.
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol,
Murray Cook kicks the concrete-hard dirt
on the National Mall and shakes his head.
who has traveled the world building baseball
fields. If you can t grow grass here, it s sad.
He looks at the hundreds of chairs set up for
a college graduation and predicts that when
it rains, as forecast, the area would become
be a muddy mess. We can make this better,
and we will.
The upcoming makeover, including new
grass and monument repairs, is no minor
feat. The National Mall the site of
presidential inaugurations, Martin Luther
King Jr. s I Have a Dream speech and political
rallies is the country s most visited park.
Each year, it receives 30 million visitors,
more than Yellowstone, Yosemite and the
Grand Canyon combined, and holds at least
3,000 permitted events.
says Caroline Cunningham, president of the
Trust for the National Mall, a non-profit
group raising money for its restoration. She
says the soil is now so compacted, after
thousands of events and pickup softball
National Park Service can t just lay down sod
and hope it lasts.
Also, because the park service has lacked
funds, she says the front of the Jefferson
Memorial plaza built on pylons has
sunk 8 inches in the past two years, the Tidal
Basin s sidewalks are cracking, and the
Lincoln Memorial s Reflecting Pool leaks 50
million gallons of water annually. She says
the foul, non-circulating waterways caused
the deaths of about a dozen ducks last
summer at the foot of the U.S. Capitol.
The 684-acre National Mall, largely designed
by Pierre L Enfant in 1791, has begun a
multiyear restoration that includes new
walkways, trees and visitors centers. The
trust aims to raise half of the estimated $700
million cost, of which $400 million is
considered deferred maintenance.
Starting anew
Cook is the project s grass guy. Since working
as a teenage groundskeeper in
1974, he has had a passion for ballfields and
has spent decades developing them,
including for the 2000, 2004 and 2008
Olympics.
Still, the National Mall is a challenge. There s
nothing like this in the world, says Cook,
president of Maryland-based Brickman
Sports Turf, citing the Mall s phenomenal
use. He says the foot traffic far exceeds that
of Disney World, where he has also worked.
It s one of the hardest areas in the country
to grow grass, he says, noting Washington
is too hot in the summer and too cold in the
winter for many grasses.
It s a lot more complex than it appears on
the surface There s a science behind
growing grass, adds Suzette Goldstein,
project manager for HOK, an architectural
firm that has designed the new lawn.
Cook and Goldstein consulted scientists
before deciding on a deep underground
layer of soil and sand, as well as a mixture of
tall fescue (Wolfpack, Firenze and Turbo) and
Kentucky bluegrass seed. For irrigation, the
site will have pop-up sprinklers fed by four
massive underground cisterns that will hold
a total of 1 million gallons of water.
So far, the project only has money to do
three of the National Mall s eight center
grass panels and two of its cisterns. This
first phase is set to start late summer.