DC Small Park Reservations | P17AS00308

Opportunity Information: Apply for P17AS00308

The DC Small Park Reservations opportunity is a National Park Service cooperative agreement focused on research and planning support for Washington, DCs network of small public reservations tied to the historic Plan of the City of Washington, specifically the 1791 LEnfant Plan and the 1901-1902 McMillan Plans. The core purpose is to produce a cultural landscape overview and, just as importantly, to build a practical framework the Park Service can use to carry out two major follow-on efforts across these sites: Cultural Landscape Inventories (CLIs) and a Rapid Ethnographic Assessment Procedure (REAP). In other words, the work is less about completing every single site inventory immediately and more about setting up the structure, methods, and pattern-based understanding needed to do those inventories and ethnographic assessments consistently and efficiently across a very large portfolio of small parks.

The project covers roughly 300 small parks that are managed across three National Park Service units in the nations capital: National Mall and Memorial Parks (NAMA), Rock Creek Park (ROCR), and National Capital Parks East (NACE). These properties vary dramatically in size, from extremely small fragments (as little as 0.00045 acres) up to about seven acres. They also vary widely in function and character, including commemorative spaces at national or neighborhood scales, traditional neighborhood parks, playgrounds, and a range of transportation-related landscapes such as traffic circles, street medians, and traffic islands. Because these sites are numerous and diverse, the opportunity emphasizes developing an overarching way to understand them as a connected system of designed and evolving urban landscapes, rather than treating each site as an isolated case.

A key input for the work will be the Small Parks Management Strategies (2017) report, which the cooperator will receive and use as the baseline list and management context for the parks to be evaluated. From there, the project team is expected to establish a framework for identifying and assessing broader patterns across the small park reservations. The notice highlights several pattern areas that may be examined, such as land use, urban design relationships, connections to surrounding neighborhoods, and natural systems. The intended result is research that helps the Park Service understand how these small parks collectively reflect planning history, civic design, transportation evolution, community use, and ecological conditions, and how those themes should shape the approach to future CLIs and ethnographic work.

Administratively, this listing is not an open call for proposals. It is explicitly labeled as a Notice of Intent to Award rather than a Request for Applications, meaning the agency is signaling an intended award action rather than soliciting new applicants in a competitive process. The agreement is described as having been previously competed under agreement number P14AC00921, which suggests this action is connected to an existing or previously selected partner arrangement. The opportunity is categorized as discretionary and uses a cooperative agreement instrument, implying that the National Park Service expects to have substantial involvement in the work rather than simply issuing a grant with minimal agency participation.

The funding opportunity number is P17AS00308, and it sits within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category under CFDA 15.945. Eligible applicants are limited to public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, reinforcing that the work is designed for an academic or university-based partner with research capacity in areas like cultural landscape history, urban planning history, landscape architecture, and ethnographic methods. The listed award ceiling is $56,000, and the original closing date shown is June 13, 2017, though in practice the Notice of Intent format indicates the primary relevance is documenting the governments intent rather than inviting submissions by that date.

Overall, the opportunity supports foundational research and method-setting for documenting, interpreting, and planning for DCs small park reservations as a historically significant and functionally complex system. The deliverables are meant to guide consistent future inventories and community-informed understanding of these places, helping the Park Service manage everything from tiny traffic islands to small neighborhood greenspaces in a way that respects historic design intent, present-day urban conditions, and the lived cultural meanings attached to these public landscapes.

• The National Park Service in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DC Small Park Reservations" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2017-05-31.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2017-06-13. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $56,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education.

Apply for P17AS00308

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