D.C. has plenty of parks, but if you’re standing in one, there’s a good chance it isn’t owned or operated by the city’s government.
A new report from the D.C. Neighborhood Parks Task Force says that should change, and that the National Park Service should turn more of its parks and parcels over to local control.
“This continued federal control is a relic of the transition to Home Rule in the 1970s when the city had too much on its plate to worry about municipal parks management. Now the District has the capacity to do more,” former Mayor Anthony Williams wrote in an email to The Washington Sun. Williams co-chaired the task force with Ward 3 council member Matt Frumin.
While D.C. has 8,398 acres of parks, only 10% are actually controlled by the city, with the remainder falling under federal control by NPS. While some of those are established and historic destinations such as Meridian Hill Park or Lincoln Park, many of the parcels that NPS owns are actually small “pocket parks” in city neighborhoods that are of little federal interest and aren’t regularly tended to by NPS staff.
Trending
The report notes that federal parks tend to lack amenities for community residents. There are 105 playgrounds on land operated by the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, but only 19 on land owned by NPS. For basketball courts, the ratio is 122 local to 12 federal. As for dog parks and spray parks, virtually all of them are on D.C.’s land.
“Playgrounds, dog parks, movie nights, nature trails, accessible natural areas, and other common features of urban neighborhood parks are often not permitted on NPS-managed land. When uses are allowed, NPS must weigh any investments among competing needs within its budget,” the report says.
The challenges of the current land ownership situation are also felt by residents who may not know whether to call the District or NPS if they see something that needs to be fixed or addressed, or even snow that needs to be plowed in the winter. Some stretches of sidewalk and small traffic islands and circles are owned by NPS, which doesn’t have the same capacity to clear ice and snow that local agencies can have.
“The responsibility to manage the city’s local parks, reservations, and remnants is an unnecessary burden on NPS staff and resources,” the report says. “At the same time, the complex structure makes it challenging for the District government to provide the types of city parks and programming its residents and visitors need.”
City officials say the challenges with federal lands have been exacerbated by layoffs and job cuts over the past two years. Last year, Mayor Muriel Bowser wrote in a letter to the White House that “challenges persist on NPS properties where reduced staffing has impacted trash collection, graffiti removal, and overall maintenance.”
Still, the report notes that if D.C. were to gain more responsibility over parks and parcels currently owned by the federal government, the city would have to increase its own capacity to properly manage those lands. That could come by way of expanding DPR or creating a new coordinator of the public realm position modeled after a similar post in New York City.
The report also says D.C. should look to the NeighborSpace initiative in Chicago, a nonprofit land trust that works with community groups to maintain small parks and gardens, and consider new opportunities for raising more revenue from the parks the city currently controls. The report says D.C. recovers less than 5% of its parks and recreation costs; the national average is 26%.
Any effort to transfer more federal parks to D.C. would take a White House that is amenable to it. The Trump administration has shown particular interest in renovating certain federal parks in the city, but also was supportive of D.C. gaining more control over the RFK campus on the east end of Capitol Hill, which will be used for a new Commanders stadium and some 70 acres of parks.
There have been coordinated pushes over the years to either turn over federal land to D.C. or find creative solutions that allow the city to manage federal parks. That latter option is evident at Franklin Park in downtown D.C., where the city paid for a $21 million renovation after reaching an agreement with the federal government, and in Lincoln Park, where a nonprofit community group helps NPS with upkeep. There are also ongoing plans to transfer 110 acres of parkland at Poplar Point over to the city.
Williams, the former mayor, thinks the upcoming change in city leadership is a perfect opportunity to re-energize discussions around how to improve parks in the city.
“The city will have the first new mayor in over a decade. It’s an opportunity for real change in how the city embraces its parks,” he said.
Author
