WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's plans to build a skyline-altering arch in the nation's capital won initial approval Thursday from a key federal commission.
The National Capital Planning Commission voted to approve preliminary site and building plans for the 250-foot (76-meter) arch the Republican president wants to build on a traffic circle at the Virginia end of Memorial Bridge from Washington.
Agency staff had recommended preliminary approval along with a series of revisions to the project to comply with a federal law that limits building heights in Washington, but the commission voted to continue deliberating the height issue.
“This is a complex project,” Chairman Will Scharf said before the vote. A final vote could come at the commission's next meeting, in September.
Commissioners heard a summary of the staff report and its recommendations and heard from several dozen people who had signed up to testify about the project, one of a handful being pursued by Trump to reshape the nation's capital to his liking.
Some of those who testified against the project said they opposed building a celebratory arch so close to the solemn burial ground of Arlington National Cemetery.
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a separate federal agency, approved the design for the arch in May. The National Capital Planning Commission oversees construction on federal land in the city and began reviewing the arch plan in June.
Opponents of the project argue that the arch is too big for the skyline and would disrupt carefully designed views between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery that were meant to symbolize the reunification of the North and the South after the Civil War.
But the opposition has done little to influence the members of either commission, both of which include some of Trump's closest allies. Trump appointed Scharf, a top White House aide, to lead the planning commission.
A group of veterans and a historian have sued the Trump administration in federal court to block the arch construction over concerns about disruptions to the sightline.
The arch would be more than twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial, which is 99 feet (30 meters) tall, and close to half the height of the Washington Monument, at about 555 feet (169 meters) tall.
Trump had said last year that the arch could be paid for with unused funds from the hundreds of millions of dollars he said he has raised from corporations, donors and other wealthy people to pay to build a new $400 million ballroom at the White House.
But, as it turns out, some public money will be used for the ballroom project, as well as the arch. The White House has not released a cost estimate for the arch.
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This story has been corrected to show that the arch's height is planned for 250 feet, not 260 feet.
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