Save Sandy Hook.org

BREAKING NEWS court date is scheduled for September

July 6th, 2008

National Park Service's
...sixth extension to
Sandy Hook Partners...
defies comprehension.

ASBIRY PARK PRESS
July 6, 2008
Nine years is enough

The National Park Service's recent decision to grant a sixth extension to Sandy Hook Partners to prove it has the financing needed to redevelop 34 historical buildings at Fort Hancock defies comprehension.

The latest one-year extension comes 18 months after Sandy Hook Partners' James Wassel announced with great fanfare he had received a commitment from an Englewood Cliffs real estate investment firm to provide funding for the first phase of the project.

What happened to the commitment?

Why didn't the park service insist on seeing it?

And why has the park service, which chose Sandy Hook Partners to redevelop Fort Hancock from among 19 other bidders nine years ago, allowed all that time to elapse with no proof of its ability to finance the project?

A year ago, the inspector general of the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Service, agreed to investigate the matter at the request of Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J.

The report has yet to be issued, although federal officials have said it will be forthcoming soon. It can't be soon enough. Someone needs to shed light on this fiasco.

Clarification also is needed of how and why Wassel has been allowed to make repairs to at least three of the buildings at Fort Hancock, including the chapel, which he has sublet to a company that caters weddings there.

The acting superintendent of the park service at Sandy Hook recently claimed Wassel was allowed to do so under terms of a 2004 lease agreement.

The document includes no such provision.

Granting of the lease was contingent on Sandy Hook Partners proving it had the financing needed to carry out the project. Four years later, the only thing it has proved is that the park service made a big mistake when it entrusted Wassel with the job.

Someone also needs to determine exactly how Wassel's plan to sign a long-term sublease this summer with a medical research group conforms with the recreational and educational mission of park service lands.

A group opposed to the commercialization of Fort Hancock,
Save Sandy Hook, is appealing a federal district court decision that Sandy Hook Partners' plans do not violate federal environmental, historic and park service laws. A court date is scheduled for September. Hopefully, the inspector general's report will be completed well before then, shedding light on why the park service has played ball with Sandy Hook Partners for so long.

And hopefully, a reversal by the courts or a finding by the inspector general will help clear the way for an alternative plan for rehabilitating Fort Hancock — one that puts public access and enjoyment of the north end of Sandy Hook ahead of private profit.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20080706/OPINION01/807060335/1029/OPINION

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Press Releases :

November 13th, 2008

Save Sandy Hook will continue to figh...

...commercialization was never envisioned by the founders of the National Park Service