The National Park Service (NPS) will hold two public meetings to discuss plans for the future of historic Fort Hancock at Sandy Hook in the Gateway National Recreational Area.
Raina T. Williams, a spokesperson for the park service, said Monday that the meetings are planned for Feb. 22 and Feb. 24 from 4 to 8 p.m. The first will be held at the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center on Ocean Avenue and the second at Henry Hudson Regional School, Highlands.
Williams said last month when confirming that the park service was holding closed meetings with park officials and others who have experience with redevelopment about the fort’s future, that the results of these meetings would be released in mid-February in several formats, including public meetings.
The closed meetings, Williams said last month, would center on the best possible way to conduct a leasing program for the buildings at the fort.
The meetings come two months after the park service told Rumson developer James Wassel to vacate three buildings at the fort — the chapel, theater and former park headquarters — he had occupied under a lease granted to him in 2007.
Wassel and the park serviced signed a 60-year lease in 2004 that allowed him to renovate and commercially develop at least 36 buildings at the fort. Wassel’s proposal for the fort was selected from those submitted in 1999 to the park service.
The 2004 lease was canceled in October 2009 after the park service had given the developer a series of extensions to prove he had the financial ability to complete his proposal to commercially develop the site, and he was unable to do so. The 2007 lease giving him control of the three buildings was granted under a clause in the 2004 lease.
The developer used the former park headquarters as the office for his company, Sandy Hook Partners, and rented out the chapel and theater for weddings and other events.
Wassel’s plan was opposed by many who were against commercial development of the historic fort, including Save Sandy Hook, a group formed to challenge the 60- year lease, and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th District). When the closed meetings were announced last month, Pallone said the NPS should be “very transparent at every point” in the process it uses to plan the fort’s future .
The NPS has said it does not have the funds to renovate or preserve the fort’s buildings. Pallone has urged the park service to lease the buildings to nonprofit groups on an individual basis rather than as a group as was done in the Sandy Hook Partners lease.