Judy Scott Feldman, who has worked for years to slow the overcrowding of the National Mall, was caught off guard by what she sees as the latest piece of sprawl in America’s front yard.

Two years ago, preliminary designs for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial showed what appeared to be a tiny “Ranger and Visitor Information Kiosk” on the monument’s footprint. But by March, Feldman says, the proposal had morphed into an oversized, granite-paneled “Visitor Contact/Bookstore/Restroom Building” measuring 34 by 84 feet on the recreational field across West Basin Drive.