NPS RETIREES URGE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE TO OPPOSE ATTACK ON VALLEY FORGE

NPS RETIREES URGE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE TO OPPOSE ATTACK ON VALLEY FORGE

“Outrageous” Complex Threatened for 78-Acre Site Within National Park Amounts to “Hostile Takeover Bid” to Siphon Off Park Visitors; Why Isn’t NPS Speaking Up to Protect Valley Forge?

WASHINGTON, D.C.///March 12, 2008///The 640-member Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR) today warned that the integrity of Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania is at risk because of a proposed development plan for 78 privately held acres within the boundaries of the park. CNPSR urged the U.S. Department of Interior and National Park Service (NPS) to break their silence and speak out against the unfolding “siege” on Valley Forge.

The planned Disney-style private hotel-tavern-restaurant-convention-center-museum complex would be built on a site that historians say was critical to the Continental Army’s successful winter encampment of 1777-1778. The plan is the brainchild of a group called the “American Revolution Center (ARC).”

CNPSR Executive Council Chair Bill Wade said: “There was no battle at Valley Forge when Washington and his men survived the winter of 1777, but this historic site now is under siege today by an organization operating with what appears to be complete disregard for the fact that this is land inside part of the National Park System. The ARC, headed by Mr. Tom Daly, seems intent on using the proposed complex to hijack visitors from the Park and make them paying customers for private enterprise. The development would strain the natural resources of the surrounding area and threaten potential cultural resources on the historic grounds planned for the development. It also would ‘short-circuit’ the park’s extremely well-researched educational program for visitors, which is designed to begin at the park’s Welcome Center and progress through a very well-structured experience as visitors move through the current park.”

Where are National Park Service officials? Where is the Secretary of the Interior? Why are they not defending Valley Forge from this modern-day siege?

ARC officials have pressured National Park Service officials to allow their Valley Forge plan to move forward without significant protest. To date, the superintendent of the Valley Forge National Historical Park has been alone among Interior/NPS officials in speaking out against the plan to undermine Valley Forge.

Normally, National Park Service and Interior Department leadership would publicly oppose a plan as radical as the one advanced by the ARC as being completely inconsistent with the mission of the NPS and with the legislation that established Valley Forge. However, because of the intense political pressure generated by Mr. Daly and his colleagues, leaders in the NPS and Interior seem less inclined to take such action.

The ARC purchased the site in question – what is called an “inholding” – after it broke off negotiations with the NPS to place a museum in conjunction with the park’s existing Welcome Center because it failed to accept the NPS’s requirements for the museum.

During this time, Daly and his colleagues repeatedly criticized the NPS in public and distorted numerous aspects of the “partnership” in an effort to justify ARC’s actions. Then Daly went to the Lower Providence Township Board of Supervisors and prevailed in his quest to establish a “Living History Overlay District” ordinance covering the inholding. In a controversial move, the supervisors narrowly voted 3 – 2 in favor of the ordinance on September 6, 2007.

The ordinance allows not only the museum, originally planned to be built in conjunction with existing park facilities, but it also allows for an auditorium, a conference center, up to 99 lodging units, a restaurant, tavern, retail store, chapel and a campground, along with associated roads and parking areas.

Wade said: “I recently visited Valley Forge, and viewed the site of the proposed development. Moreover, I have studied the park’s general management plan, completed in December 2007. This proposal by ARC is nothing short of a ‘hostile takeover bid’ designed to create a new, private entrance to the park, lure visitors to the development in order to present ARC’s version of the history of the area and collect the revenue from their visitors.”

He added: “Valley Forge National Historical Park belongs to all Americans. It is not Tom Daly’s park. It is not the Lower Providence Township’s park They evidently think of Valley Forge as a local park, rather than as a component of a National Park System that is a cumulative expression of a single national heritage, for the common benefit of all the people of the United States, as the United States Congress intended it to be when it established it as a National Historical Park in 1976. People from New York, North Dakota and Nevada should be disgusted by those who would undertake or support actions that would diminish the values of this American icon in favor of narrow self-interests.”