Excerpts from the
conclusion to
"Bracing for Change: Fort Monroe and the
Need for Parkland in Hampton Roads"
The Trust for Public Land conserves land for people to enjoy as
parks, gardens, and other natural places, ensuring livable communities
for generations to come. TPL's Center for City Park Excellence seeks to
make cities more successful through the innovative renewal and creation
of parks for their social, ecological and economic benefits to residents
and visitors alike. With funding from many generous friends of Fort
Monroe, the study was commissioned by the nonprofit
Fort Monroe National
Park Foundation, which educates the public and promotes
better understanding of the importance and potential of the 570 acres
constituting Fort Monroe. The foundation is a sister organization to
Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park.
Excerpts:
That Fort Monroe is a national treasure is indisputable and undisputed.
What should happen to the fort after its decommissioning, however, is
the subject of lively debate.
Based on the findings of this study, we believe that the urban portion
of the Hampton Roads area is short of parkland overall, particularly in
certain strategic locations such as its urban core and its waterfront.
The five major cities of the Hampton Roads area have a combined total of
30,483 acres of public parkland, just over 10 percent of the five
cities' combined land area. By comparison, much more crowded New York
City actually has more parkland than all five of the Hampton Roads
cities combined. And even though the five Hampton cities cover a much
larger area than New York, Boston or the main cities of San Francisco
Bay, the other three regions all have more parkland as a percentage of
their cities' land area than Hampton Roads.
Even more striking is the deficit of public parkland along the shoreline
in the Hampton Roads region compared to the three other port cities.
Hampton Roads has almost twice as much city shoreline as New York City
and more than nine times as much city shoreline as either Boston or the
three San Francisco Bay cities. ... Both New York City and the San
Francisco Bay area have double the percentage of parkland along the
shore, while Boston has almost three and a half times as much waterfront
parkland.
This shortage deprives the region of many benefits that parks bring --
from recreational opportunities to natural preservation, from enhanced
property value to greater tourism revenue, from improved human health
outcomes to increased community cohesion thanks to volunteerism in parks
and the increased competitiveness of the region to businesses
considering relocating to the area, especially those with a significant
number of white collar workers.
It is important to recognize that some of Hampton Roads' park shortage
is due to the area's heavy military presence. Of the region's 12 major
bases, nine are in the main cities. And because the shoreline along
these bases is not publicly accessible, it is critical that Fort
Monroe's shoreline be conserved as open, public parkland in the future.
Lastly, it is indisputable that parks created from old military
installations prove themselves as significant tourism draws. Two nearby
cases in point -- Fort Pulaski in Savannah, Ga. and Fort Sumter near
Charleston, S.C. -- attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every year
as national parks. As a more impressive fort in a larger metropolitan
area, Fort Monroe could be expected to have an even greater tourism
impact.
Because of Fort Monroe's bulls-eye central location within Hampton
Roads, combined with its extraordinary collection of architectural,
historical, recreational and conservation resources, we believe that its
conversion to parkland would help reduce the parkland deficit of the
entire Hampton Roads area and would also have significant positive
spin-offs -- economic and otherwise -- for the entire region.