After taking an initial tour of Battery Potter in 2008, I took a second tour just this past spring (2011). I dunno, I enjoyed it.

I have no idea what these things are called! They’re too small for cattails, they’re too heady for grass, but they’re all over the place in the summer! And they make a pretty photo. That’s what REALLY matters.

In July 2010, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a muralist putting the finishing touches on a new mural by the Asbury Park casino.

I think I have photos of the exact wall before it was painted, but I’ll need to find them and re-upload them; I had all my black-and-white photos stored on Zooomr, which permanently went kaput without giving any warning.

I took this yesterday! That’s a lie, it’s totally January in New Jersey. But remember when…?

Officer’s Row, Sandy Hook (Fort Hancock).

Since Fort Hancock was deactivated in 1974, most of these houses have just sat around, doing nothing.

After years with no clear plan for the future of Fort Hancock, in 1999 the National Parks Service looked at a bunch of submitted proposals for what to do with the various fort structures. They selected Rumson developer James Wassel to renovate the buildings Fort Hancock:

The developer had planned to spend $70 million-$90 million on restoring the buildings that lie within the NRA’s Sandy Hook unit. Sixteen Officer’s Row homes were envisioned as bed-and-breakfast inns. A dorm once used for U.S. troops was proposed to be transformed into classrooms for Rutgers University or perhaps Brookdale Community College. Mess halls, gymnasiums, even the old mule barn and the officer’s club also were part of the deal. And the NPS would spend $2.2 million on a new dock so he could ferry conferees over to Fort Hancock from Manhattan (Repanshek 2010, para. 3).

Sounds great, right?

Well, the funds didn’t come through, and nothing at all has been done with the buildings since then. Wassel’s 2004 lease for most of the Officer’s Row buildings (which technically never went through) was canceled in 2009, and his 2007 lease for three other buildings (Post Chapel, Post Theater, and the old park service headquarters) was canceled in 2010, even though he’d renovated them. The structures further deteriorated since Wassel’s involvement (or lack thereof) in 1999, so now they’ll be even MORE of a hassle to restore, IF any developers can be convinced to take on the project now.

Every time my family drives by Officer’s Row, my dad shakes his head in disbelief. “This is waterfront property,” he says. “The land alone must be worth a fortune. I’m sure there are young couples who’d jump at the chance to restore one of these things. But look! Everything is just rotting! What a waste! What a shame!”

After that whole fiasco, the Gateway National Recreation Area officials are understandably wary of leasing out all the buildings for one big development project, and officials are reputedly seeking individual tenants for a “a more efficient building by building rehabilitation strategy (Repanshek 2010, para. 5).”

But finding lessees is hard, and keeping them may be even harder. The Audubon Society, one of three organizations permitted to stay in its Officers’ Row building after Wassel’s lease, just decided to close down its operations in late December 2011 (Sheehan 2011).

On the brighter side, as of last week, the National Park Service had plans to negotiate a lease for one of the buildings with the AIDS Resource Foundation for Children (National Park Service 2012). So at least it doesn’t seem like they’ll be bulldozing the whole area immediately.

(P.S. I actually took this photo back in 2007 when MCDP was fully active, but I guess I didn’t like it for some reason. Upon second review, I don’t think it’s too bad at all.)

References:

Are you jonesing for warmer weather yet? I am. Here’s Ocean Grove in June.

(Same view as the one I posted last week, actually. I can’t help it; if I’m on the Ocean Grove pier, and I have my camera, I need to take a photo.)

This one time, in December 2008, I almost skated over a snake. It looked like a twig!

Luckily, my camera turned on quickly enough for me to snap a photo of it. Gotcha!

In the historic area of Sandy Hook, near the lighthouse and the Post Chapel, there’s a restored house on the officer’s row creatively called History House. It contains a lot of historic things.

Like typewriters.