Save McMillan Park, Stop the Surplussing
Daniel Goldon Wolkoff amglassart@yahoo.com
What is that mysterious place with the concrete silos on North Capitol? McMillan was the first integrated park enjoyed by the city from the early 1900’s to World War II. It is on the National and District Registries of Historic Places, and part of the Senate Parks plan for the National Mall. You can read the National Register of Historic Places nomination at http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.html. The plan for an “Emerald Necklace” of green outdoor recreation was never realized east of 16th Street, where the city provides one fifth of the park land than it lavishes on the privileged Upper NW section. McMillan is a hybrid of Clean Water Utility and Olmsted designed park. People enjoyed meeting, taking a stroll, sports, concerts and the breezy sunset vistas, even sleeping out on hot summer nights.
As the federal government felt that DC’s water system was threatened by sabotage during World War II, it fenced off the site in 1941. The engineering miracle that saved DC from disease and provided safe water was converted to a “fast filtration” system using more chemicals in 1986, and the federal government sold McMillan to the District of Columbia for over $9 million. The Department of Interior wanted to protect the DC Reservoir and keep the site as a “green space” by placing restrictive covenants on the sale. Since 1986, for over twenty-eight years, the DC government has robbed the people of the use and enjoyment of twenty-five acres of desperately needed outdoor recreation park land. They kept up a barbed-wire-topped fence surrounding our park. We own it, and it should be reopened and redeveloped according the principals of creative, adaptive reuse that guide the international environmental movement of sustain ability from Paris to Istanbul, and from Seattle to the Highland in New York City. Instead, Mayor Gray’s VMP development plan for McMillan will demolish the twenty acres of underground water filtration galleries, and over-urbanize the site with fifty buildings, including thirteen-story condos. The community struggle to Save McMillan Park, preserving the Olmsted designed surface park and existing twenty acres underground, creates the exciting potential for large scale “indoor agriculture” and a family fish network. With proven vertical indoor growing technology we could convert the McMillan/Olmsted Park caverns to a fully functional, local food production facility, making it a truly sustainable site. Imagine superior organic fresh fruit, vegetables and family farmed fish, freshly produced right here in DC , no longer trucked from California, Florida, and Mexico. Please see this fascinating video on the vertical farming process at http://youtu.be/ILzWmw53Wwo
We need McMillan for arts, urban agriculture, a Glen-Echo-style community education, and cultural campus, concerts, and music festivals. We can train young people and the underemployed to gain healthy careers in building trades restoring the historic structures, and start a rehabilitation/renovation service community youth corps. The potential for benefit to DC and the nation is unlimited. We have to stop Mayor Gray from “surplussing” the land to VMP, the private development conglomerate that does not need the subsidy of millions more in public money. Say no to the “give away” of our billion dollar asset. Call your city councilmembers and demand our park for our needs, no “surplus.” See http://www.friends-of-mcmillan-park.org to help start a transparent community based process for our park, our families, and our kids.
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