Fort Totten itself is history, as the
Defense Department closed the vast majority of the complex in 1995 and
has been working since to transfer the land to New York City control.
There has been no shortage of controversy,
confusion and conflict over the proposed uses for the shoreline land —
progress has been slow and many aspects of the transformation remain
unresolved. The decision by the Pentagon to relinquish
military control of 90 percent of Fort Totten’s 163 acres on the Long
Island Sound officially signaled the end of an era that began in 1857,
just before the Civil War, when the fort was first commissioned and
construction began. Fort Totten was officially named in 1898 for
General Joseph G. Totten, a man who built the modernized defenses around
San Francisco and New York. From its inception through 1967, Fort Totten
stood as a heavily armed bastion on the forefront of America’s costal
and aerial defenses, though its guns were never once fired in anger,
said the Bayside Historical Society, which resides within the fort.
After 1967 the base became a mostly unarmed residential center
for Army families. When the elimination of Fort Totten was
announced in early March 1995, the Pentagon determined that only the
headquarters of the 77th Army Reserve Command — one of the nation’s
largest reserve commands, with troops now serving in Iraq — would
remain active. The massive
reduction was part of a nation-wide trend of military base closures as
part the downsizing that followed the end of the Cold War. Since the late 1960’s, however, a number of
organizations — mostly non-profit or government agencies — have
leased space within unused fort buildings, and their future now seemed
uncertain. On top of that,
a federal law apparently mandated that excess military housing be used
as homeless shelters. The
prospect of converting some of the City’s most valuable shoreline real
estate into shelters did not please anyone. After it was determined that a more recent
federal statute exempted Fort Totten from a future as a homeless
shelter, a new scandal emerged. Military
inspectors and the state’s environmental agency revealed significant
amounts of mercury pollution in the soil and waters of the fort.
Eight years after the Army announced the
closure of Fort Totten, the property still remains in a legal limbo.
A portion of the land is still scheduled to be
conveyed to the New York City Parks Department, which will turn most of
the property into a large park. Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe told
the Tribune in April that the transfer process “is going to be
a long one.” He added, “We’re doing what we can to get the land,
but there is a lot of red tape to cut through.” Another portion has already gone to the New
York City Fire Department for use as a training facility. Most of the agencies that now call the fort
home will be allowed to continue their occupancy under new leases from
the Parks Department. But at a time
when the City is slashing department budgets across the board, none of
these projects will see much progress any time soon.
A spokesperson put the cost of the full project at around $46
million, and noted that the Parks Department currently has a mere
$650,000 slated for restoration of the old fort building.
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