I understand you are covering the upcoming April 26 Mare Island Historic Park Foundation Board meeting and the agenda item regarding our plans for the care of the SSBN-658's Sail.
As a volunteer in the museum and one of the many Vallejo residents involved in the project, I urge you to support the MIHPF Advisory Committee proposal to relocate the sail to a more appropriate location. It is our almost unanimous decision to suggest that the sail be located in Alden Park, adjacent to the Polaris Missile already located there, along with artifacts representing 150 years of activity on the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Some of us have put quite a lot of time and energy into possible locations for the sail, taking into consideration factors ranging from visibility and ease of public access, to ongoing cost to the foundation, to long term plans by Lennar and their future development intentions.
As it is currently sited on Causeway A, it is only visible from two very narrow "windows": about 200 feet of Nimitz avenue, and about the same length of River Park adjacent to the Front Room Restaurant. From the Vallejo side, it appears as a grey-ish box shape, resembling nothing much more than a large dumpster with numbers painted on it. There is no public access to the sail without prior arrangement, it's easy to miss, even from 100 feet away, and if my understanding is correct, the City does not want it to remain there permanently.
While Alden Park is not the perfectly ideal location for the sail, it represents the best compromise given our needs and lack of budget: it will not require ongoing fees to be paid to the City -- unlike other historic venues around the country, the MIHPF pays some tens of thousands of dollars annually to the city of Vallejo for the privilege of maintaining the buildings and artifacts we co-curate with the city: building 46, built in 1855 and housing the artifacts the foundation has agreed to care for, Quarters A and B, and Saint Peter's Chapel with its Tiffany Studios stained glass windows.
The park is immediately adjacent to the museum and mere yards away from her original construction site. Such locations are typical of the other submarine sail locations across the nation. It is already a "park-like setting" appropriate to visitor access and reflection -- as such it will actually reduce maintenance costs to the city as the footprint of the sail will reduce the area requiring landscaping. It concentrates our Naval history within the historic core district as planned by Lennar, and approved by the city some years ago if I am not misinformed. It also represents an immediate solution unimpeded by Lennar's long term plans for the Historic Waterfront, or the City's apparent lack of interest in all things Mare Island.
It is important to us, the volunteers for the MIHPF, to proceed as quickly as possible -- with the 1100 member strong Mariano G. Valleo Crew reunion scheduled here for July 4th, 2011, this represents great potential to improve the City's image as a visitor's destination. They have already offered to start fundraising for this project, a fact I find both stunning and extremely encouraging.
We have very, very tentatively discussed the possibility of adding an event to welcome these visitors. As July 5th is Admiral Farragut's birthday, it occurs to me that a Farragut Festival could be an annual event with great potential to bring large numbers of of repeat visitors to our city, perhaps with popular attractions like a BBQ cook-off, and / or a Gold Rush or Barbary Coast theme along the lines of the Renaissance Faire.
If we act now, it is reasonable to believe that we can have the sail installed in Alden Park in time for the Crew Reunion. Please help.
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