National Park Service Frees Francis Field from "Transfer of Jurisdiction"

However, a "Cooperative Management Agreement" Will Direct Improvements

Posted: September 4, 2024.

The National Park Service (NPS) states that it has removed "Francis Field itself" from a broad transfer of jurisdiction requested by the District of Columbia government for most of the NPS park and recreational assets in the West End neighborhood.

This is good news for the field, and was made in response to a request by Friends of Francis Field (FFF) to NPS top management.

Tammy Stidham, Associate Regional Director for Lands and Planning of the NPS National Capital Region, announced the change in plans at the headquarters of Rock Creek Park in a meeting with FFF board members Brad Kerchof and Gary Griffith, and Rock Creek Park's acting superintendent, Brian Joyner, and other staff members, on August 26, 2024.

The proposed transfer of jurisdiction (TOJ) of those West End recreation assets was first announced publicly on February 13, 2023.

FFF notified NPS of its opposition to the TOJ in a letter of March 23, 2023, and requested then that Francis Field not be included for historic and legal reasons. (See related story on this website.)

Stidham said that the other parts of the proposed TOJ will go forward. This includes the land on which Francis Swimming Pool is built, the outdoor basketball court behind the Francis-Stevens School, the large grass field behind that school, and the four tennis courts at the rear of the Emerson House residences at 2301 N Street NW. (See FFF graphic below.)

NPS will also include a small strip of NPS parkland west of the existing Francis Dog Park, so that it can be used to expand that facility westward. Dog park expansion was a specific request of the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR).

All of those parcels are currently part of U.S. Reservation 360, which is the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. It is both a part of Rock Creek Park—a national park—as well as an historic district in its own right since 2005, when the parkway was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

According to Stidham, the changes wanted by the District government to Francis Field will be discussed in a "cooperative management agreement" (CMA) in which NPS and the District government "work together on improvements to the field," while the jurisdiction of the NPS section of Francis Field remains with NPS.

FFF argued in its 2023 letter of opposition to the TOJ that the land for Reservation 360 was purchased by the U.S. Congress beginning in 1913, for the landscaping of the National Capital, which includes the parkway designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., which was described, illustrated, and mapped in the well-known McMillan Plan of 1901. (See copy of letter on this website.)

Francis Field "Improvements" Still Uncertain

Exactly what improvements to Francis Field the DC government wants—and what NPS will approve—are not yet clear. Stidham said that "they sent us a draft of the CMA, but we haven't looked at it yet." She added, however, "We're working toward getting that done."

DPR, in presenting plans for Francis Field improvements at a community meeting on March 2, 2023, stated it wanted to construct a regulation soccer field with irrigation. Other documents obtained from NPS show that DGS proposed a "Declaration of Covenants" that would also include new lights, new fencing and even "a field house."

When Delano Hunter was DPR director in 2021, he stated in a letter to Francis Field stakeholders that "Dog usage poses the most significant risk to the condition of the field," and wrote that access to Francis Field "must be controlled by installing new fencing and lockable gates." (See copy of letter on this website.)

Hunter also stated in that letter that he believed "it is necessary to expand the dog park and replace the existing surface with synthetic turf to attract dog usage."

Hunter is now director of the D.C. Department of General Services (DGS), which is responsible for building and maintaining the District's real estate, and the agency which requested the wide-ranging TOJ of recreational assets from NPS two years ago.

FFF has objected to high fences, locked gates, and lights for nighttime play on Francis Field since the area became more and more residential beginning in 2007.

Stadium lights and high fences were removed from Francis Field in 2010—with the support of NPS—after a new landscape plan for the field was ordered by the D.C. Zoning Commission, designed by a professional landscape architect, and approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) which has aesthetic jurisdiction over what it has called "Francis Field park." (See 2017 article on CFA master landscape plan.)

DPR and DGS may get the expanded dog park with artificial turf that Hunter wants, but Stidham stated in the meeting with FFF that locked gates for park land were not compatible with NPS policy.

She said in addition that both the CMA for Francis Field, and the TOJ for the rest of the recreation and park elements, are required to be approved by the National Capital Planning Commission, but that they will be "separate cases," and that neither would be scheduled soon. "Very far off," she remarked, "several months."

Community engagement for both, she added, would be conducted by the District government and local Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2A. Members of that commission for calendar year 2025 will be elected this November.

Any new plans for Francis Field must also be reviewed by the CFA, which approved an update of the 2009 master plan in 2020 with only minor revisions. (See article on this website.)