Here is an annotated copy of a Richmond Times-Dispatch article on Fort Monroe. In my view Bill Geroux, the reporter, has done a fine job. The annotations are my own opinions, though I expect that my Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park colleagues would largely or completely share them. Thanks.Steve CorneliussenVP, CommunicationsCitizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org)Cost of closure quadruplesLatest Army estimate of $288 million doesn't include bill for cleanupWednesday, Jan. 23, 2008Richmond Times-DispatchBy BILL GEROUXTIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERHAMPTON A state redevelopment plan would turn the Army's stately Fort Monroe into a community of homes, offices, businesses, public parks and museums -- including the fort's distinctive star-shaped inner fortress with granite walls and moat.Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr., chairman of a state panel whose job is to determine Fort Monroe's future, said in an interview that the outlines of the plan are becoming clear. [[The plan that is indeed becoming clearer has important overlaps with what CFMNP -- and the public in general -- advocate. But in certain vital respects, it differs. That's why it matters that the plan has its origins in months of negotiations conducted privately -- some have objected to the more accurate adverb, secretly -- between Hampton and the Kaine administration in 2006 and early 2007. Those negotiations excluded Fort Monroe's actual owners: all Americans.]]
Bryant said some key issues are still under debate, including whether part of the 180-year-old fort will become a national park and how much new development should be allowed on the property once the Army turns it over to the state in 2011. [[If this is accurately reported, Secretary Bryant has publicly excluded the possibility of a national park encompassing all of Fort Monroe -- even though we don't yet have in hand the national park reconnaissance study results. The fort is 180 years old, yes -- but public ownership of the land is 400 years old.]]
Local members of Congress and city officials, meanwhile, have raised concerns over ballooning Army estimates of how much it will cost to close Fort Monroe. The latest estimate of $288 million -- up from $72 million three years ago -- does not include the cost of painstakingly clearing the fort grounds of buried, unexploded shells, some of them dating to the Civil War. [[For new construction, presumably, more of this expensive cleanup must be done, but less of it for the green space that the public actually wants.]]
"No one knows what that cleanup is going to cost," said Ross Kearney, mayor of neighboring Hampton, which has a huge stake in what becomes of Fort Monroe. "I'm scared the Army's not going to have enough money to do it."
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said Fort Monroe is one of many bases whose closure or realignment is likely to cost far more than the Pentagon originally estimated. The GAO said most of the cost increases are due to rising construction costs, though it offered no specifics about Fort Monroe. The realignment of two other Virginia bases -- Fort Lee and Fort Belvoir -- also figures to cost far more than the original estimates, the GAO said.
Fort Monroe, currently the headquarters of TRADOC, the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, is a garden spot of military posts. It occupies a barrier spit at the entrance to Hampton Roads harbor. The fort's modern amenities include sandy beaches, a marina and handsome red-brick buildings on streets lined with live oaks and crape myrtles.
Long a target of budget-cutters at the Pentagon, the fort finally fell to the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. TRADOC operations are to be moved to Fort Eustis in Newport News. Fort Monroe's 570 acres -- the 63-acre inner fortress plus surrounding land the Army has annexed over the years -- will become the property of the state.
Immediately after the BRAC decision in 2005, Hampton officials spent a quarter-million dollars hiring a redevelopment consultant, who held public gatherings and devised plans for the base. Those plans included spreading residential development into open areas, and local preservationists rose up in protest. [[Question: Wasn't that a half-million dollars, and wasn't the money given to Hampton by the federal government? Comment: This paragraph may imply that the public supported the notion of building those houses. Hampton presents it that way, but as the comments the Army has been receiving show, that is in fact not what the public wants -- or what it said in 2006 that it wanted.]]
Steve Corneliussen, a spokesman for a local preservation group, Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, called Hampton's ideas "preposterous." He said the core of Fort Monroe should become "a grand public place for everybody." [[The "core"? Actually, what CFMNP and I say is that all of Fort Monroe -- the entire National Historic Landmark -- should be made into a grand public place for its actual owners: all Americans.]] The fort has enough lively history that it could be transformed into a fourth stop on the traditional Hampton Roads history tour that includes Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, he said.
Kearney said preservationists overestimate the fort's potential as a historic draw. The Army has been spending $15 million a year [[That's a figure that the National Trust for Historic Preservation says must be vetted because it is entirely undocumented.]] to maintain it, he said, and "you're just not going to have that many tourists buying T-shirts." [[In fact, the president of the Virginia Tourism Corporation told the Fort Monroe Authority last fall that Fort Monroe could become the jewel in Virginia's tourism crown. Please note also that in Hampton's original reuse plan, history was nearly entirely omitted. Hampton amended it later, following public discussion of Fort Monroe's under-recognized heritage-tourism potential. Please see the op-ed URLs -- starting with an op-ed from 13 months ago -- that are cited in Scott Butler's white paper on the recent Fort Monroe history symposium, which will be posted at CFMNP.org this weekend.]]
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine created the 18-member Fort Monroe Federal Area Redevelopment Authority, heavy with Hampton residents, to consider the competing passionate viewpoints and produce a plan. [[Some of those passionate viewpoints are not represented on that panel, which includes seven citizen members. By state law, all seven must be Hamptonians appointed by Hampton's city council, which has twice shown its readiness to fire appointees as well. Together with a Kaine administration that has shown itself highly sympathetic to the false notion that Hampton somehow, in some sense, owns this national treasure, what this means is that the planning for a national treasure is dominated by one city.]]
Bryant said the fort has strong potential for tourism but will need other revenue sources to not become a financial burden on Hampton or the state. [[What's needed is federal transition money to get Fort Monroe going as a Grand Public Place for all its actual owners. Question: Why are we asking the federal government to clean the place at a level allowing lots of new construction -- a de facto federal subsidy for Hampton's real estate aspirations -- when we could use less federal money for such a transition, and thereby gain something that would be more enriching anyway?]]
Preliminary surveys suggest many of the fort's historic buildings can be renovated into homes and office buildings, Bryant said, and the state most likely will allow a limited number of new homes and commercial buildings. Most of the fort's beaches and other natural areas would be open to the public, he said. [[Isn't there a bit of "Let them eat cake" in that? The entire place has been publicly owned for 400 years, and the public is expressing an overwhelming consensus for continuation.]]
At the urging of the preservation groups [[and because of a provision in state law]], the National Park Service is conducting a study to determine whether the fort, or at least part of it, could become part of the National Park System. The service expects to finish the study this spring. [["Or at least part of it"? The sensible proposal is for some sort of innovatively structured, self-sustaining national park encompassing the entire post, and financed by a revenue stream from the post's present assets, which could also be sensibly augmented following decisions made based on appropriate criteria -- as opposed to the criterion of development for development's sake.]]
Bryant said he trusts that the Army will close the fort on schedule and perform whatever environmental cleanup is necessary to clear the way for redevelopment. But others with stakes in Fort Monroe's future expressed alarm at a recent report by the GAO.
The report concluded that the base closings ordered by the 2005 commission would not save nearly as much money as the Pentagon had claimed in advocating them. In particular, it said, the estimated cost of closing Fort Monroe has risen in three years from $72 million to $288 million. [[We should not do more cleanup than is necessary for a Grand Public Place with lots of green space -- and we should not use federal cleanup money as a de facto subsidy for Hampton's real estate aspirations.]]
The report made it clear that the new total does not include environmental cleanup costs at the fort, which were estimated a decade ago at $201 million but have not been updated since.
The GAO report irked U.S. Reps. Robert C. Scott, D-3rd, and Thelma Drake, R-2nd, partly because they had argued in 2005 that closing the fort would not save nearly as much money as the Pentagon claimed. The legislators sent a letter calling on the Army to explain the growing costs, but they haven't heard anything back yet, said Larry Dillard, a spokesman for Scott.
Contact Bill Geroux at (757) 498-2820 or bgeroux[["at" symbol]]timesdispatch.com.
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