CFMNP What's New

Jan. 3, 2009: TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND REPORT DECLARES THAT FORT MONROE'S "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." The TPL's Peter Harnik will present the report to the Fort Monroe Authority at the next regular meeting, which starts at 1 P.M. on Tuesday, Jan. 6, at Fort Monroe's Bay Breeze Center. The public is invited and encouraged to come. With funding from many generous friends of Fort Monroe, the TPL report was commissioned by the nonprofit Fort Monroe National Park Foundation. (Full report) (Key excerpt) (Meeting agenda)

NEW (12/21) MORE ON THE HAMPTON CITIZENS' INITIATIVE. Hampton televises city council meetings and posts the video online, where you can watch the Fort Monroe parts of last Wednesday's meeting. Using the cursor on the timeline at the bottom of the video screen, you can go to time 5:36 to watch Fort Monroe Authority Executive Director Bill Armbruster thanking the city council for working in "a collaborative way" with the authority. At time 6:16, Mr. Armbruster surprised many in attendance when he referred to the need to "ensure the transition from Fort Monroe back to the city of Hampton in a very smooth and seamless way." What does that mean, exactly? It's not clear. In any case, the word "back" makes his statement historically inaccurate, in that Hampton has never in the past had jurisdiction over Fort Monroe. The moated fortress, for example, was built over a century before Hampton's boundaries expanded to include Old Point Comfort. At time 11:24, Hampton City Attorney Cynthia Hudson discusses the Hampton citizens' initiative, promising to investigate whether the petition asks for what is "within the council's authority to do under state law" and whether the petition involves any "procedural or substantive defects." Surely true friends of Fort Monroe can have faith that Hampton's leaders will be wiser and fairer about citizen petitions than have been their counterparts in Gloucester County. At time 13:40, Committee of Petitioners Chairman Sam Martin can be seen explaining the Hampton citizens' Fort Monroe initiative very briefly.

NEW (12/18) CHANNEL 13's MIKE GOODING HAS SCOOPED THE WORLD ON THE HAMPTON CITIZENS' INITIATIVE. Mr. Gooding is the first journalist to realize that Hampton citizens are making something new and important happen. After three years of Fort Monroe planning exclusively by a handful of powerful people operating under the profoundly unfortunate assumption that Fort Monroe somehow belongs to Hampton, citizens of that very city are using city charter provisions to take matters officially into their own hands. By seeking to amend an ordinance about Fort Monroe, they seek to move Fort Monroe toward what everybody but a few politicians knows it ought to become: a Grand Public Place for everybody. That's as opposed to becoming a partly privatized place for financially unnecessary and generally unwise development -- including what the present ordinance calls "industrial." (No kidding; that word is in there.) His two-minute video, easily viewed online, is a must-see for all true friends of Fort Monroe.

NEW (12/7) THE NORFOLK PBS STATION'S FORT MONROE DOCUMENTARY "Kingdom by the Sea: Fortress Monroe" is easily accessed and viewed online. It's a 27-minute masterpiece that's crucial to see if you're at all interested in Fort Monroe. WHRO-TV, Channel 15, recently received a "Best Television Documentary" award for the film, which is a production of WHRO's Center for Regional Citizenship.

NEW (8/25) NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT EDITORIAL BOARD REITERATES ITS CALL FOR CREATING FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK in another editorial like the one from June 8 (see below on this "What's New" page) that concluded: "But none of those stories will be told as effectively or reach as broad an audience unless the National Park Service is involved in the next stage of Fort Monroe's history, unless preservation groups commit resources to establishing a public trust for its protection, and unless local, state and federal leaders unite in the obvious -- creating Fort Monroe National Park." Will we see discussion and action from Virginia's leaders, including those who seek to represent the congressional district containing Fort Monroe, candidates Nye and Drake?

NEW (7/6) NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE COVERS THE PROSPECTS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK, highlighting the Fort Monroe freedom story of self-emancipating "Contrabands." A key excerpt: "It was at Fort Monroe in May 1861 that the stage would be set for the demise of slavery, almost two years before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation." The article quotes CITIZENS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK Vice President Gerri Hollins, who founded the Contraband Historical Society, and CFMNP President H. O. Malone.

NEW (6/8) NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT CALLS FOR CREATING FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK in an editorial that concludes: "But none of those stories will be told as effectively or reach as broad an audience unless the National Park Service is involved in the next stage of Fort Monroe's history, unless preservation groups commit resources to establishing a public trust for its protection, and unless local, state and federal leaders unite in the obvious -- creating Fort Monroe National Park."

NEW (6/3) CITIZENS FOR A FORT MONROE NATIONAL PARK COMMENTS ON THE FORT MONROE AUTHORITY'S DRAFT REUSE PLAN. The plan itself appears at FMFADA.com, where online comments will be accepted until June 15. We will be saying more on this subject, probably including in an e-mail message to members of our list, which you can easily join. (We don't use the list often, and we share it with no one.) We will be urging you to comment to the Fort Monroe Authority.

NEW (6/1) KEY OFFICIAL REJECTS DEVELOPMENT-FOR-DEVELOPMENT'S-SAKE. Mike Gooding's recent Channel 13 report, still available online as of June 1, includes Fort Monroe Authority executive director Bill Armbruster saying, "We don't want to do development any more than we feel would be appropriate to make [Fort Monroe] economically sustainable." Amen! Will this fine new principle be incorporated explicitly into the authority's reuse plan?

NEW (5/30) CITIZENS' FORT MONROE CIVIC ENGAGEMENT HIGHLIGHTED ON "HEARSAY." Cathy Lewis not only hosts the WHRV FM 89.5 noontime civic-affairs talk show "HearSay," she heads a regional civic leadership institute. So it's all the more notable that on May 28, she and Daily Press reporter Kimball Payne energetically acknowledged the work that private citizens across the region are doing to ensure a fitting and proper future for Fort Monroe. "Citizens and folks who where interested in the future of that beautiful place have really made their mark on this plan," she said concerning the Fort Monroe Authority's reuse plan. She continued: "I think when the story is told on Fort Monroe, the piece of this that will be very intriguing to study from a civic-engagement perspective is the work of those organizations that have been so active in having a hand in this process, and if you look at issues that have happened across the region in recent memory, I can't think of one where you had more folks involved, more folks who were genuinely committed to doing the hard work of civic engagement to make their thoughts and their feelings known than in this case ... ." To start the 7-minute discussion, available online, move the audio button on the timeline at the bottom of the audio screen to time 6:44, the point in the hour-long broadcast where the discussion began.

NEW (5/12) CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE GLENN NYE, writing in a political blog: "I understand that a full study of the feasibility of making Fort Monroe a national park has not yet been commissioned. I think a special resource study is a good idea." He's running in the second district, which contains Fort Monroe. At the moment, the National Park Service is completing a small "Reconnaissance Survey" simply to decide whether or not to recommend the Special Resource Study -- a measure that Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park has been calling for since mid-2006.

NEW (4/30) CONGRESSMAN ROB WITTMAN: "I'd like to see us make sure that Fort Monroe is preserved in a way that the public can enjoy the entire property." (In reply to Steve Corneliussen on Cathy Lewis's "HearSay" on WHRV 89.5; go to time 49:48 on the "audio on demand" for April 30 at the "HearSay" site.) This may be the first congressional-level affirmation that all of Fort Monroe is a National Historic Landmark belonging to everybody.