Comments on the Fort Monroe Reuse Plan
Submitted for
general consideration by
Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org)
May 28, 2008
At Citizens for a Fort
Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org), we appreciate the work that has gone
into the Fort Monroe Reuse Plan, now available online at FMFADA.com, the
Web site of the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority. Though we
assume that this preliminary plan is in some degree only a placeholder for
bureaucratic BRAC purposes, we believe it merits serious public attention.
So we join the Fort Monroe Authority in urging Fort Monroe’s actual
owners—American citizens—to comment online at
FMFADA.com.
As we discuss below under the heading “Encouraging Progress,” we believe
that parts of the plan have much to recommend them. We agree with
the four nationally respected preservation organizations -- National Trust
for Historic Preservation, National Parks Conservation Association, Civil
War Preservation Trust, APVA Preservation Virginia -- that recently
adopted our view that Fort Monroe should become “a vibrant and economically self-sustaining, publicly accessible
place where people live, work, and visit.” In this reuse plan, we believe
we see real progress in that direction. However, as we discuss below under
the heading “Needed Improvements,” we also believe that in important ways,
the plan doesn’t live up to the vision and the wishes expressed nearly
unanimously by the hundreds of this national treasure’s owners who
responded earlier this year to an Army call for public comments.
ENCOURAGING PROGRESS
* Though it’s not in
the plan explicitly, we commend and affirm Fort Monroe Authority Chairman
Preston Bryant’s observation (at FMFADA.com) that Fort Monroe’s true
owners are “the American people.” We’re delighted to see growing general
recognition of this core truth.
* The plan shows
growing respect for the fact that Fort Monroe in its entirety is a
National Historic Landmark.
* The extent of the
envisioned potential green space has increased.
* The plan seems to
respect the public’s clearly expressed wish not to sell off any public
land.
* The envisioned use of
the Wherry area—crucial for preserving and enhancing Old Point Comfort’s
essential Tidewater character and setting—has been reclassified to
“undetermined.”
* The plan presents a
lower and more measured and sensible estimate of the Army’s departure’s
immediate negative economic effects on Hampton.
* We see a growing
awareness that Hampton’s taxpayers are in danger of shouldering financial
responsibilities and liabilities unnecessarily.
* The plan acknowledges
that environmental cleanup is far more expensive for reuse involving new
construction than for reuse involving green space. This means it
implicitly acknowledges that to ask American taxpayers to pay for
extensive cleanup—as indeed the plan does—is to ask them to subsidize
development that we believe is probably not even necessary or desirable.
* The plan acknowledges
that the “Commonwealth of Virginia and Hampton Roads community must work
together to create an economically sustainable future” for Fort Monroe. In
other words, though Hampton’s unique stake requires special respect, this
opportunity and this challenge confront all of us, not just a single city.
NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS
* Though Virginia state
law calls for investigating the prospects for National Park Service
involvement, this reuse plan leaves the NPS unmentioned. The nationally
respected preservation organizations mentioned above recently adopted our
view that the NPS “could be a significant partner” and that the Presidio
Trust’s example merits serious consideration.
* The plan uses the
fundamentally wrong criterion for new development. New construction, if it
is needed, should answer carefully established economic necessity for Fort
Monroe’s self-sustenance. Yet the plan advocates development simply for
the sake of development, albeit within certain limits. (We regret that,
unaccountably, the four nationally respected preservation organizations
have stopped short of opposing development-for-development’s-sake.)
* The plan lacks vision
concerning the growing recognition of Fort Monroe’s international
significance in the history of liberty—and it mischaracterizes the
Contraband story. As a panel of nationally prominent historians wrote
following the Fort Monroe Authority’s January 2008 history symposium, “The
story to be told is an American story, not just an Afro-American
story.” It may be true that at present, this heritage-tourism potential is
only for the “submarket” or “niche market” of “African American visitors,”
as the plan asserts. But Fort Monroe’s long-term future involves America’s
very meaning as a nation founded not on ethnicity, but on ideas like
liberty and equality.
* Hampton’s near-term
economic concerns, overstated in the past, merit serious consideration,
but should not be a primary reuse planning criterion—especially not when
we should be creating a Grand Public Place for the long term, to enrich
Hampton and the region not only financially but in other important ways as
well. We’re glad that the preservation groups appear to concur.
* The reuse plan’s
ambiguous reference to the “Fort Monroe management entity” calls to mind
the problem that jurisdiction is mainly still unaddressed. We believe Fort
Monroe needs jurisdiction by something like the federal trust at San
Francisco’s Presidio—with both the responsibility and the authority for
planning success and then for following through.
* Troublesome and still
not-well-defined questions persist concerning Hampton’s financial stake in
a future Fort Monroe. We believe that Hampton’s uniquely important
interests are best respected by making Fort Monroe into a Grand Public
Place for all, and we believe that a self-sustaining, innovatively
structured national park is the obvious best means to this end.
* The plan scants the
issues of viewsheds (visual settings) and the cultural landscape. We agree
with the preservation groups that “great care must be taken to preserve
and enhance” character-defining qualities like “context, setting, open
space, landscapes, and viewsheds.”
* The plan calls for
cleaning the Wherry area all the way to the level needed for new
construction—which we believe is unnecessary and would, in effect, make
taxpayers subsidize development merely for development’s sake.
* A reference to the
Technical Support Manual for the Reuse of Fort Monroe shows that the
discredited and financially unnecessary 2006 plan to blanket Fort Monroe
with upscale houses has still not been expunged.
* Though much in the
planning is beginning to respect the clearly expressed wishes of Fort
Monroe’s actual owners, it is factually incorrect to present this reuse
plan as the result of public opinion expressed at the July 2006 charrettes
held in Hampton, or as a shared public vision resulting from those failed
exercises in participatory, hands-on democracy.
* Section 110 of the
federal preservation law, which requires the Army to make maximum efforts
to minimize harm to the National Historic Landmark at Fort Monroe, is
unmentioned and needs attention along with the important and
much-discussed Section 106.