By Linda Wheeler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 28, 1998; Page A03

An international search for a memorial design to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be launched now that Congress and President Clinton have approved the Mall area as the site for the tribute to the slain civil rights leader.

The Mall already is home to several significant memorials, including the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, and the planned home for four more besides the King monument. Concern that the heart of official Washington was becoming crowded led Congress in 1986 to restrict monuments in what is called Area One to those that are "of preeminent historical and lasting significance to the nation."

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), a sponsor of the legislation placing the King memorial on the Mall, said in a news release, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the Nation's greatest leaders in the ongoing struggle to achieve full equality and justice for all Americans. He has been an inspiration around the world for those who cherish freedom, peace and the dignity of mankind."

Clinton signed the King bill on July 16 in private, to the disappointment of the memorial's sponsor, Alpha Phi Alpha, which had hoped he would draw attention to its 14-year crusade to honor King. A White House spokesman said Clinton decided to have Vice President Gore make the announcement when he addressed the NAACP national convention in Atlanta that day instead of staging a ceremony in Washington.

George Sealey, one of the black fraternity's leaders, said the group was pleased to have Clinton's approval.

"The Mall is a very central place," the retired State Department protocol officer said. "It is the most traveled area and one seen by the most tourists, the most prominent area for this type of thing."

Sealey said the fraternity was founded in 1907 and has 70,000 members, of which about 18,000 are active. King was a member of the organization, but Sealey said the group would have sought a memorial to the civil rights leader regardless because of his contributions to society.

The bill does not specify a site but allows memorial leaders to find a location somewhere in the general Mall area within a zigzag boundary that includes a slice of Virginia.

The eastern boundary is the Capitol Reflecting Pool. The southern boundary follows Maryland Avenue SW and the 14th Street Bridge into Virginia. The western boundary follows the Potomac River to the northern point of Roosevelt Island.

The northern boundary crosses the Potomac River just below Key Bridge and then follows the District side of the Potomac River shoreline along Rock Creek Parkway to Virginia Avenue NW, skirting the Kennedy Center and dropping down to Constitution Avenue. At 17th Street NW, it jogs north and then east around Lafayette Square, and then returns to Pennsylvania Avenue on 15th Street NW, ending at the Reflecting Pool.

Area One includes large blocks of buildings such as Federal Triangle and the Smithsonian Institution.

Glen DeMarr, a National Park Service official who helps guide memorial planners through the labyrinthine approval process, said there is no list of sites for the King committee to consider. Instead, committee members are shown a map that outlines the footprint of existing memorials and then are left to find appropriate open spaces.

Finding the right space is only the first of many steps. Three federal agencies must hold public hearings before approving a location. Then the memorial committee has to return for several rounds of hearings on the design. Ground cannot be broken until all the approvals are in place and the money is raised to cover entire cost of the project, plus a maintenance fund.

The committee has seven years to complete the process.

The World War II memorial organization succeeded in getting approval for a controversial site on the Mall on 17th Street between Constitution and Independence avenues, but when it presented a design concept that critics said intruded on the Mall vista, the design was rejected. The group has since come back with a much more subdued version of the original concept and has received preliminary approval.

The King memorial project director, John Carter, said the plan is to build a monument to "the man, message and mission." He said the memorial organization will mount a worldwide design search because King's message was international in scope.

Carter said the committee is open to considering any design offered.

"What we want to do is define the experience you will have when walking up to the memorial," he said. "We don't want to predispose that it be a statue or a building."

He said the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a model for him because he has a strong emotional response each time he sees it.

"I get chills when I walk by," he said. "I never would have thought that memorial would do that. Whatever we end up with, it will do the same thing."