SANDY HOOK — A series of closeddoor meetings will be held by the National Park Service beginning this week to explore the future of historic Fort Hancock, according to Raina T. Williams, a spokesperson for the park service.
Two of these meetings will be held at Sandy Hook, while others will be in other offices not identified by the park service, she said. News of the meetings was reported in the Jan. 23 issue of the Asbury Park Press.
Williams said park service officials from Golden Gate Recreation Area in San Francisco and Lowell (Mass.) National Historic Park will be at the meetings, along with others, not from the park service, who “have some experience” with redevelopment.
She declined to identify the other possible participants.
Williams said the meetings would focus on the “the best possible way” to move forward on the leasing program for the buildings at the fort, and present the ideas for discussion to the public.
She said the results of the meetings would be released in mid-February in multiple formats, including public meetings.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th District), who has opposed Rumson developer James Wassel’s controversial plan to rehabilitate historic buildings at the fort, said Monday the park service should be “very transparent at every point” of the process concerning planning for the fort’s future.
What comes out of the meetings should be quickly announced, he said.
Pallone said that transparency was needed because of the “Wassel experience,” where “a lot of the decisions” were made “without transparency.”
He said he doesn’t want a repeat of the process the park service followed in selecting Wassel as the redeveloper.
Pallone said that he favors leases for the buildings in the fort being given on an individual basis to nonprofits from New Jersey, rather than to one developer, as was done with Wassel.
The park service meetings this week will take place 11 years after the park service, in a closed meeting, selected Rumson developer James Wassel’s plan to renovate and commercially develop at least 36 buildings at the fort.
The park service granted Wassel a 60-year lease in 2004, but canceled it in October 2009 when the park service, after a series of extensions given to Wassel to show he had the means to carry out his proposal, said the developer had not demonstrated he had the financial resources to complete the work.
In November, Wassel was asked to leave the three buildings he held under a separate 2007 lease — the post chapel and theater, both of which he rented out for weddings, plays and other events; and the former park headquarters, which he used for the office of his company, Sandy Hook Partners. The park service said the developer had not fulfilled the terms of his lease.
In addition to Pallone’s objections, Wassel’s proposal was challenged by Save Sandy Hook, a group formed to fight commercialization of Sandy Hook, and by New Jersey Friends of Clearwater, an environmental group forced to leave its Fort Hancock headquarters of 16 years when the park service selected the Wassel plan.
The two organizations unsuccessfully tried to block Wassel’s lease in court.