Charlottesville Podcasting Network

Thanks very much, WINA and Secretary Bryant, for continuing this Charlottesville dialogue about Tidewater’s — and also Virginia’s and the nation’s — Fort Monroe. To my knowledge, as I said to Coy on the air, Coy is the first journalist outside Tidewater to recognize that Fort Monroe is not just a local Tidewater issue.

For the full story on the danger of inappropriate development of Fort Monroe — according to the Civil War Preservation Trust and according to Preservation Virginia — please see http://www.CreateFortMonroeNationalPark.org (or CFMNP.org for short).

The WINA Fort Monroe podcasts include so far:
* Secretary Bryant’s original June 26 Fort Monroe interview (http://blog.sorenseninstitute.org/blog/Podcasts/_archives/2007/6/27/3051806.html, with a comment that I posted),
* the “equal time” interview that Coy granted me on August 13 (http://www.cvillepodcast.com/2007/08/14/crn-the-future-of-fort-monroe/), and
* Secretary Bryant’s reply here in this posting.

Some comments about the secretary’s reply:

At least twice, the secretary mentioned Hampton as having, in effect, a sort of ownership of Fort Monroe.

He said “Fort Monroe is pretty much in the city of Hampton,” which has been merely geographically true for less than a third of Fort Monroe’s lifetime, since Hampton expanded in the early 1950s. In my view this technical mapping change from the 1950s does not justify what I call the Hampton-owns-it presumption.

And Secretary Bryant said that Fort Monroe is “economically strategic for the city of Hampton. … The state is working in partnership with the city of Hampton to come up with a good reuse plan, and we’re working with a lot of other stakeholders as well.”

Now, it is true that thanks to a partnership last winter in Richmond between Republican Senator Marty Williams and Democratic Governor Kaine, Hampton retains much of the control that it obtained in 2005.

That was when blundering Base Realignment and Closure processes — which cannot distinguish a national treasure from a Fort Drab or a Camp Swampy — sent this national treasure in Hampton’s direction as a development windfall, a windfall for the kind of narrowly envisioned exploitation that causes preservation groups to declare Fort Monroe threatened.

That was also when Virginia’s political and journalistic leaders failed to exercise any skepticism.

But it is also true that Fort Monroe plainly, legally, morally, historically, and as a practical matter belongs to all Virginians and indeed to all Americans.

It no more belongs to Hampton than Monticello, if that national treasure somehow came into the commonwealth’s possession, could ever belong just to Charlottesville.

So despite what the secretary — and the governor — say, Fort Monroe is not just a strategic asset for Hampton. It is a strategic asset for all of us.

And I mean Governor Kaine no disrespect when I report that he simply disrespects this fundamental principle.

Nor will he and his cabinet so much as discuss this principle with citizens.

On a visit to Secretary Bryant last fall, I asked how anyone can justify donating a national treasure to one city. His answer was no answer at all, really. He said, “That’s a political question.”

Well, yes, it surely is a political question, though I believe the secretary and the governor owe citizens an actual answer all the same.

But Governor Kaine refuses to talk in any depth with citizens about that question or any other concerning Fort Monroe — as I know from having twice had him personally promise me that he would discuss Fort Monroe with my group, Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park, only to have his staff then go back on his promises.

I suspect that that’s because the governor already has the outlines of a plan in mind, and has had them in mind from the beginning, during the administration’s highly secretive talks of 2006 with Hampton officials. It’s a plan that involves a standard development mindset, with no room for the kind of grand vision that many in Tidewater would prefer.

Consider what Secretary Bryant said in the present interview.

He said that the governor “wants to conserve as much of the land as possible, recognizing that housing and some commercial development will be a part of it.”

We haven’t even assessed the overall situation yet, but we already know that we have to let Hampton build those houses that it wants?

We already know that we have to have some degree of Hampton’s desired gated-community-without-the-gate — on land that should belong to all of us?

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it is crucial to establish the actual maintenance costs of the historic structures. No one yet knows those numbers. And no one knows what revenue the existing assets could generate. Yet Governor Kaine can already decree that there simply must be commercial development?

My group’s view is that commercial development is an option if needed. It should not be a definite plan before any need is established.

The secretary also said, “It has to be economically sustainable — nobody wants to create a monster that we can’t pay for.” And he said, in reply to my criticism that he had failed to mention the national park option, “Mr. Corneliussen is correct that it is part of state law that we have to consider some association with the National Park Service for this project on some level, and that’s what this evaluation is part of. … So we are considering that.”

Association with the National Park Service “on some level”?

Watch out. That may well mean the plan where they make only the moated fortress into a national park, and then give much of the rest of the post’s remaining 500 acres to developers and to Hampton — as can easily be done under the rules they developed in secrecy in 2006 with Hampton.

“A monster that we can’t pay for”?

Indeed. An irony is that many Virginia leaders spurn federal involvement in favor of placing Virginia taxpayers at direct risk — for example, to pay for future hurricane damage at this property that, at the moment, is still a federal National Historic Landmark, and could remain one.

The deep irony, of course, is that even if you care only about the money aspect — which you shouldn’t, but even if you do — making Fort Monroe into a grand public place would actually bring more prosperity, not less, to the region and the commonwealth, and to Hampton.

It would make Hampton a destination city.

It would bring more than would a comparatively impoverished vision involving the standard kinds of development that the secretary and the governor insist on, and that they are openly and avowedly biased towards.

My group’s view is that some sort of hybrid national park, something like the one at the Presidio in San Francisco, is the best way to make Fort Monroe into a grand public place for everybody — rather than a partially dismantled public place, where great portions of what should belong to all of us have been conveyed by Governor Kaine to private parties for private uses.

In this whole matter, it seems to me that Virginia Democrats are not acting like Democrats.

Democrats are supposed to watch out for ordinary citizens. Isn’t that what they claim?

What ordinary citizens want at Fort Monroe is preservation and enhancement of the entire post as some sort of grand public place for everybody.

But as shown yet again in this radio interview, it is not at all clear that Governor Kaine, Secretary Bryant and the administration respect that reality.

I should note, by the way, that I say all of this as a strong supporter of Governor Kaine on pretty much all other issues.

I don’t think he has it wrong because he’s a bad guy. I think he has it wrong because he has uncritically accepted a mistaken mindset and has ignored the people in Tidewater who most deeply understand Fort Monroe.

If you agree, please tell him so at his Web site. His people pay genuine attention to what people send them via that site.

Thanks very much.

Steven T. (Steve) Corneliussen
Vice President for Communications
Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org)
Please send comments to me at Contact@CFMNP.org