The Trust for the National Mall released the winning designs for its competition to overhaul one of the nation's most visited parks Thursday. Hatchet File Photo
A restaurant, café, ice skating rink and amphitheater will call the National Mall home by 2016, after a group of architects won a competition Thursday to restore one of the country’s most visited parks.
The nonprofit Trust for the National Mall’s eight-person panel selected three teams of architects to revamp the grounds at Constitution Gardens, near Constitution Avenue and 17th Street, the Washington Monument grounds and Union Square.
Constitution Gardens, a park between the Vietnam Memorial and World War II Memorial, will see a restaurant, ice skating rink and pavilion on a spruced up landscape.
A glass amphitheater paired with a café and plaza will welcome visitors to the grounds south of the Washington Monument, or Sylvan Grove. Two terraces and a reflecting pool will sit on Union Square, the west lawn of the Capitol Building.
The National Park Service has approved plans for the Washington Monument grounds and Sylvan Grove but architects for Union Square must submit designs to the Architect of the Capitol, a federal agency that maintains the Capitol complex, according to The Washington Post.
The three winning teams were selected from a whittled-down group of 12 finalists.
