The barrier would be nine feet tall and permanent. An Interior Department office has certified it as the most accessible the park has ever been.
WASHINGTON—The administration’s plan to build a permanent Lafayette Square fence will increase the public’s access to the park, the Interior Department and the Secret Service certified Friday, under a formula that records each linear foot of new barrier as a measurable gain in public access.
The certification accompanies a proposal, released Friday and jointly crafted by the Secret Service, the White House, and the Interior Department, to permanently enclose the public park across from the White House behind fences eight to nine feet tall. That proposal lists its objective as maintaining public access to the space. The new certification exists to prove it does.
“Access has never meant standing in a place,” said one senior Interior Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the methodology. “Access means the place continues to exist for you to be near. A fence guarantees the park will still be there. You cannot access a park that has been lost, so we are protecting your access by keeping you out of it.”
How the Lafayette Square Fence Adds Access
The methodology is administered by the Office of Access Continuity, an eleven-person unit working out of a former visitor kiosk on the square’s northeast corner. Under its 24-page framework, a completed Lafayette Square fence of the type proposed would register as a 41 percent increase in public access, a figure the office called conservative. A taller barrier would score higher.
That framework applies the same accounting the administration used when it designated an enforcement office as the nation’s official biosafety policy, counting the office’s existence as the deliverable the public had requested.
Repaving, Trees, and Other Certified Gains
The office also reclassifies two features of the proposal that critics had questioned. The administration has said it would repave the square to remove pavers that could be pried loose and thrown as projectiles, and that work is logged as an access improvement, on the ground that a paver in a citizen’s hand is a paver no longer available to the public. A separate plan to plant 47 trees in the square is credited as a further gain, on the reasoning that a citizen who cannot see the White House through the new trees is, in the framework’s words, “accessing foliage.”
Lafayette Square is federal parkland, part of the National Park Service unit formally named President’s Park, and has been a site of public assembly and protest for generations. The proposal would let the White House and the Secret Service close the park to pedestrians whenever they identify a security risk. Each such closure is counted as a period of maximum access preserved.
The Most Accessible Version of the Park
Asked to describe the most accessible possible configuration of the square, the official did not hesitate. “Total enclosure,” the official said. “A sealed park is a preserved park, and a preserved park is accessible in perpetuity. The public keeps full access to the knowledge that it is there.” The office confirmed it is studying whether a roof would score higher still.
The proposal goes before the Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday. As of Friday, the public’s access to Lafayette Square remained scheduled to increase.
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