The National Park Service wants to build a memorial to the Peace Corps near the Capitol, but the local ANC panned the plan.

ANC 6C unanimously voted against a proposal to build a memorial to the 53-year-old program on the triangle of parkland bounded by C Street, Louisiana Avenue and First Street NW. Putting the memorial there would harm two trees and take over valuable park space, ANC members ruled.

“We’re getting more and more of these requests, and they’re eating up our public space,” ANC 6C commissioner Karen Wirt said Friday.

Members objected to potentially harming a 75-foot-tall oak tree and 35-foot-tall elm tree in the pocket park, and said they could not support designs that had not been presented to them, Wirt said.

The Park Service named the half-acre pocket park on Louisiana Avenue its preferred site for the memorial due to its proximity to other national monuments, as Washington Business Journal was first to report.

The Park Service and the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation studied three other possible locations: Edward R. Murrow Park at 18th and H streets NW; the pocket park at the southeast corner of 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW; and 26th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

The memorial authorized by Congress earlier this year is intended to honor the “establishment of the Peace Corps and the ideals and values it represents, [as] a quintessential, preeminent part of American history, and a vital part of world history,” a presentation by the PCCF says.

Photo via Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation