The White House wants to build an underground center to provide security screening for visitors, the Associated Press reported.
Plans for the facility, including renderings of a 33,000-square-foot (3,066-square-meter) center, were included in a preliminary agenda released on Friday for the April meeting of a federal commission that approves construction on federal land in Washington, the report said.
The screening facility would be built beneath Sherman Park, which is located southeast of the White House and directly south of the Treasury building, according to the AP account. The plans say the Sherman Park location had long been where White House tourists and guests lined up for security checks before clearing trailer-type structures and walking to the East Wing entrance.
In the same reporting, AP said President Donald Trump tore down the East Wing last fall to build a ballroom. As a result, visitors currently line up near Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, the report said.
The AP report said the new screening facility would have seven lanes intended to ease processing and reduce wait times. It also said construction could begin as early as August, based on the plans, and that the White House wants the facility operating by July 2028—six months before Trump’s term ends.
The plans described by AP would keep in place the monument of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in the center of Sherman Park, the report said.
AP said the project would be carried out as a collaboration of the Executive Office of the President, the U.S. Secret Service and the National Park Service, which manages the White House grounds. The National Capital Planning Commission planned to discuss the proposal at its April 2 meeting, AP reported, citing the tentative agenda circulated Friday.
The AP report added that the same meeting agenda includes debate and a final vote on Trump’s plans for a 90,000-square-foot (8,360-square-meter) building, including a large ballroom, to be built where the East Wing stood.