Norton Holds First Authorizing Committee Hearing on New Capitol Visitors Center (6/8/07)

Norton Holds First Authorizing Committee Hearing on New Capitol Visitors Center
June 8, 2007

Washington, DC--Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton held the fist authorizing committee hearing on the Capitol Visitor's Center (CVC) that is operated under the Architect of the Capitol on Friday, June 8. Norton regularly spends more time than other members on the federal monuments and structures. She also will hold a hearing on the Smithsonian, which is passing through a particularly troubled period and on the Kennedy Center, on June 15, 2007, and will shortly introduce a bill to expand and revise the National Mall to make it a lively operating site rather than the tract of land that exists today.

"The Capitol Visitors Center can't live on beauty alone," Norton said. "Entirely fresh thinking about transportation, access and security are necessary." The Congresswoman toured the CVC, which is 90 to 95 percent completed, this week. Buses will not be able to drop visitors at the front of the CVC, she said, "for good reason, because First Street in front of the Capitol borders residential neighborhoods." Because Norton has been particularly concerned about keeping the city open and accessible post 9-11, she will also probe security to assure openness and minimum hassle.

How the transportation plan enables visitors to arrive and move through the CVC with minimum hassle, and how security will be balanced with an open and accessible Capitol will be among the issues probed at the hearing. The full text of Norton's statement follows.

I welcome our witnesses and visitors to today’s hearing on “What Visitors Can Expect at the Capitol Visitors Center: Transportation, Access, Security, and Visuals.”This morning the subcommittee will hear testimony concerning what exactly it is that visitors can expect when they arrive at the new section of the Capitol building that will be known as the Capitol Visitor Center or CVC. I visited the CVC this week and found an addition of considerable beauty and majesty, in keeping with the main Capitol building. Estimates are that the CVC is 90% to 95% complete and opening is expected in 2008. In addition, today we will hear about transportation, security, and general access plans that still are being developed and refined.

There has been no oversight of the CVC by an authorizing committee and none on the issue of transportation, security, and access that are of special interest to this subcommittee today. Because this subcommittee deals with federal construction we shared jurisdiction with other subcommittees in the past. Moreover, the new visitors center is a matter of considerable interest and concern to the Member who represents the nation’s capital. The Congress and the nation depend on this city to be welcoming to constituents and to visitors from around the world. The District of Columbia is one of America’s preeminent tourist destinations and consequently, there is a perfect synergy between what the Congress and the District of Columbia want when tourists come to the city to visit historic sites. As a result, I spend far more time than most Members on federal monuments and structures here. Our subcommittee will have a hearing on the Smithsonian, which is passing through a particularly troubled period and on the John F. Kennedy Center on June 15, 2007, and I will shortly introduce a bill for revision and expansion of the National Mall.

The visitors center idea began to take shape long before I came to Congress in 1966, when the former Public Works Committee, now the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, passed P.L. 89-790. For years, many had remarked about the spectacle of Members’ hosting school and other groups on the steps of the Capitol or constituents waiting in the heat of summer or the cold of winter to enter the Capitol, as well as the lack of meeting space or even space to stand comfortably and speak to a group of constituents. P.L. 89-790 was a simple page and a half bill that directed a “full and complete investigation and study of sites and plans to provide facilities and services for visitors and students coming to the Nation’s Capitol.” The hearing record quotes then Vice President Hubert Humphrey who said, “No city in the world treats its visitors with such shabby indifference.” The record from May 1966 reflects many ideas about where to put the center, including the Botanic Gardens, or the West Front of the Capitol, or in the vicinity of the Capitol Grounds. The record is filled with testimony brimming with enthusiasm for the concept and the uses of a national visitors center. The law was amended several times to accommodate the acquisition of land, authorize certain leases and contracts, and even became the vehicle for the rehabilitation of Union Station. (P.L. 97-125).

The need for the current center continued to grow but nothing moved forward. In 1998, following the first shooting deaths of Capitol Police officers in the nation’s history, I believed that finally security, not merely convenience, would make Congress want to focus on a visitors center. Less than a week later I introduced H.R. 4347 the Jacob Joseph Chestnut-John Michael Gibson United States Capitol Visitor Center Act of 1998. The bill provided for enhanced security within the Capitol Grounds and for an appropriate place to welcome our constituents, taking into account their health and comfort. Included in the bill was a provision that I note with some irony today, requiring the Architect to “identify alternatives for construction of the Capitol Visitors Center that will reduce the costs of construction.”

Now 40 years after the original proposal, we finally are on the verge of realizing what was called in 1966 a “building of magnificent opportunity for education in its broadest and most attractive sense.” This subcommittee is not much interested in fighting the last war over what went wrong with CVC construction program. Speaking for the host city, not to mention most Members of Congress, we simply want to make sure that the new structure works. The CVC can not live on beauty alone. Entirely fresh thinking about transportation, access and security are necessary. How will the transportation plan enable visitors to arrive at the center with minimum hassle, fresh and ready to reap the benefits of a visit or a tour? How will security plans balance the important goals of maintaining an open and accessible Capitol while moving visitors quickly into the center and ensuring the highest security for one of the world’s most strategic open facilities? Considering the funds, design and craft that have gone into the CVC, we are also interested in the management of the facility by the Architect of the Capitol, charged with the maintenance of the CVC and the main Capitol Building.

Washington is not only one of the world’s most beautiful cities; the District of Columbia is the central locus of our democracy and those principles and ideals we cherish and others to which we aspire. Every year visitors come from every state in the Union and virtually every country in the world. Individuals and groups, walk through and around the Capitol to learn first hand how democracy is achieved. The news CVC will itself be a learning experience if it is run with the same grace its beauty conveys.