SUMMARY SITE ANALYSIS OF BANNEKER OVERLOOK SITE

LOCATION:
The Banneker site is an eight-acre slope at the end of L'Enfant Plaza, an extension of 10th Street SW. The site is on a direct axis with the Smithsonian's Castle Building and reaches down to Maine Avenue and the Washington, DC waterfront along Washington Channel, an inlet of the Potomac River. It is adjacent to Interstate I-395.

SURROUNDING CONTEXT:
The location has views across the river to Arlington National Cemetery, the Pentagon and National Airport in nearby Virginia and downriver scenes of Maryland. It also sits at the nexus of a major municipal effort that has invigorated the DC waterfront area and attracts visitors from the National Mall down to the waterfront.

The Southwest Waterfront project along Maine Avenue includes hotels, shops, restaurants, a music venue that can accommodate 6,000 people, a river walk and other amenities to attract visitors. The proximity to the waterfront could also be used to extend the museum's exhibition reach to a pier where boats — actual and replicas — used for the migration and immigration to the US are moored for visitors to explore.

While the Arena Stage theater anchors Maine Avenue at one end, this museum would anchor the redesigned waterfront at the other end.

PROXIMITY TO DC METRO:
The site is just a few blocks from an entrance to the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station, the only stop that serves five out of the six lines in the Metro system. There would be hop-on hop-off stops nearby and space for school bus parking.

AVAILABILITY OF APPROPRIATE MUSEUM SPACE:
The Banneker site would provide sufficient space for the museum's permanent and special exhibitions as well as space for museum components. It could accommodate an architecturally significant building and spaces for appropriate landscaping. There is sufficient available space for a park and sculpture garden with objects focused on themes of the museum.

JURISDICTION:
Banneker Overlook is a National Park Service site. With approval from Congress and the museum's governing entity, the site would be transferred from NPS to the museum's governing entity.

ZONING:
This site has been designated for a museum.

SITE ADVANTAGES

• It is a prominent site on the edge of monumental Washington. The museum located here would be in the midst of an area deemed the cultural center of the future of Washington.
• The large vacant site on a hillside along Maine Avenue across the street from the waterfront affords an opportunity for the design of an architecturally significant building along with an inviting landscape.
• It would be large enough to handle the millions of visitors who would come every year.
• There is a direct line-of-site to the Castle Building of the Smithsonian Institution down L'Enfant Plaza.
• The proximity to the waterfront could also be used to extend the museum's exhibition reach to a pier where boats, actual and replicas, used for the migration and immigration to the US, as well as boats used by natives to ply these very waters, could be moored for visitors to explore.
• Across the street from the museum site is one of the prime destination areas of Washington, DC, the Southwest Waterfront development with hotels, shops, restaurants, the lively Washington fish market, a music venue accommodating 6,000 people, and a river walk along a marina with recreational piers over the Washington Channel.
• Along with Washington, DC's popular Arena Stage theater, the NMAP would add to the strong cultural attractions in this area of Washington, DC both day and night.
• The site is readily available and is designated by city planners as a site for a major museum.
• The museum's restaurant and gift shop along Maine Avenue could remain open after museum hours and would help stimulate nighttime street life.
• This site could facilitate landscaping including water features, sculptures and flora to enhance the beauty of the museum building as well as the entire property and neighborhood.
• The site is a two-minute walk from the popular International Spy Museum located on L'Enfant Plaza.

SITE CHALLENGES

• It is adjacent to a busy freeway, I-395. A lid over a stretch of the freeway at this location would provide space for a sculpture garden focused on themes of the museum in a park-like setting and help to connect these two sides of Washington.
• Not on the National Mall, it is three blocks from Independence Avenue along L'Enfant Plaza to the bridge over I-395 leading to the museum site. Planned renovations along L'Enfant Plaza with trees, kiosks and refreshment stands would ease that walk. The stretch could also house other museums and attractions and meet city planning goals of moving visitors off the Mall to other sites in Washington.
• The Forestall Building housing the Energy Department is built over L'Enfant Plaza on Independence Avenue partially blocking the view to the Smithsonian's iconic Castle Building. There are plans afoot by planning agencies to rectify that issue and open up that view to the north. At the same time, the view in the other direction would open up to the new iconic National Museum of the American People.
• It could be more difficult to raise money for a site off of the National Mall. But this site, with a museum and cultural centers nearby and its large and growing popularity, can be seen as the right direction to attract visitors in the years and decades ahead. The museum's own popularity from word-of-mouth will be sufficient to attract maximum visitorship into the distant future.