A planned new security screening center for visitors to the White House has been objected to by the Commission of Fine Arts, whose members said they considered the current design too large and insufficiently “beautiful” to match its surroundings in Washington, D.C.
According to The New York Times, the panel had been expected to give its preliminary approval to the 33,000-square-foot project on Thursday, but instead delayed its vote until its requests for substantial changes had been taken into account and a revised proposal had been submitted.
“Can this building please be made shorter in length and shorter in height?” asked the commission’s vice chairman James C McCrery II. “It’s such a prominent thing, and its prominence then obligates it to be beautiful.”
Chairman Rodney Mims Cook Jr. told the Secret Service, which has long lobbied for an upgrade to the temporary trailers and tents currently in use, to “come back and pay attention to what we said.”
“We definitely need this,” he added. “You’re well underway.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Independent: “For far too long, visitors to the White House have had a reduced experience where they were required to begin their tours by entering temporary, double wide trailers and tents outside, often in uncomfortable weather conditions.
“This president took it upon himself to modernize the experience for visitors touring the People’s House from beginning to end.
“President Trump is committed to giving all visitors to the White House the best experience possible. The new visitor center will be state of the art in design and highlight the beautiful history of the White House and our nation’s capital.”
The Independent also reached out to the Commission of Fine Arts for comment.
The same body had no such issue with President Donald Trump’s colossal $400 million ballroom, for which he demolished the East Wing last year and which is currently under construction.
Trump has insisted that his ballroom has long been badly needed to entertain visiting dignitaries and considers it a legacy undertaking. But the screening center is seen as a more functional facility.
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It has been called for since the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, when the current arrangement was first felt to be insufficient.
“This has not been the best situation for those visitors coming to visit the White House,” Andy Stohs, a senior adviser for technical operations with the Secret Service, told the Times.
“They’re outside. We cannot employ all the technology we’d like to at all at different times, and it’s very limiting as one security streamline.”
According to plans previously submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, Friday, the new design would feature a seven-lane entrance requiring visitors and tour groups to pass under nearby Sherman Park before accessing the White House grounds via a sunken plaza.
A monument to Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman in the center of the park would be “protected in place,” the plans pledged.
The NCPC was scheduled to discuss the project at its upcoming April 2 meeting, though that may now be delayed due to the CFA’s aesthetic concerns.
The NCPC’s chairman is Will Scharf, who is also Trump’s staff secretary and one of several members of his commission who were recently accused of being insufficiently qualified to hold their positions, rendering any decisions they might make vulnerable to legal challenges.
Jon Golinger of the nonprofit Public Citizen told The Independent this week that the commission was created “to ensure that federal development projects in the nation’s capital are constructed in a careful, coherent fashion, rather than randomly built because of some developer’s whim or a politician’s bizarre obsession.”
He urged the Trump appointees elevated to their posts, who lacked the necessary planning experience, to recuse themselves and resign.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal went even further, telling The Washington Post the appointees were “henchmen helping the president build his vanity projects.”
They were defended, however, by Ingle, the White House spokesman, who told The Independent the trio had “a wealth of experience that reflects the values of everyday Americans and President Trump’s vision to make America great again.”
