On December 9, the Families of Flight 93 group sent a letter to President Bush. Progress on the national Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, had stalled, and the families were seeking the president’s help: They requested that he seize, by executive order, a parcel of private land needed for the memorial. It was a sudden move, but the fight among the families, the landowner, and the National Park Service has been brewing for years.
On September 11, 2001, Flight 93 crashed on a plot of land owned by Mike Svonavec, who runs a small, family-owned rock quarry in nearby New Centerville. Soon after 9/11, an impromptu memorial to the heroes of Flight 93 appeared several hundred yards away from the crash site, next to the nearest road. This temporary memorial–which grew over time and now attracts about 130,000 visitors a year–was also on land owned by Svonavec, who later signed a licensing agreement with the National Park Service, allowing them to staff and operate the site. In 2002, Congress passed the Flight 93 National Memorial Act, calling on the Park Service to create a large-scale, permanent memorial.
In 2005, the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force announced that the memorial, then titled “Crescent of Embrace,” would be a 1,300-acre, landscaped park, engulfing the crash site and much of the surrounding area, including all 273 acres of Svonavec’s land. (The memorial design was later rejiggered to turn the crescent into a circle, with the park spreading to 2,231 acres.) The projected budget for the memorial was $44.7 million, not counting an estimated $10 million in land-acquisition costs. All of the necessary land was owned by private parties.
Relations between Svonavec and the Park Service deteriorated. After 9/11, the federal government provided funding to the local sheriff’s office to pay for round-the-clock security at the temporary memorial. In March 2007, that funding expired and Svonavec began paying a private security firm to watch the site. It cost $10,000 a month. In June, Svonavec placed a donation box by the temporary memorial to help defray the security expense. The Park Service took exception, claiming the box violated the terms of their agreement. They removed it after a few days; the state of Pennsylvania then agreed to pay for security through 2009.
Meanwhile, the Families of Flight 93 had taken the lead on rounding up land for the permanent memorial. Using a reserve of donations, the group purchased a parcel of 55.4 acres for $125,000 and transferred it to the Park Service. The Families approached other landowners, as well. They bought a 3-acre parcel, which included a home, for $112,000 and a 711-acre parcel from PBS Coals Inc. for $2.32 million. Each of these was in turn signed over to the Park Service. By working with the Families and the state Game Commission, the NPS now has access to approximately 1,300 acres, with 500 acres identified for future easements. All of the deals were amicably done, with the average price (discounting the house) being in the neighborhood of $3,000 per acre.
Svonavec’s 273 acres are the last important piece of land, but dealings with Svonavec have not been as smooth. In June 2007, the Families went public, claiming that negotiations broke down after Svonavec demanded $10 million, the whole of the federally allocated land-acquisition money. Initially, Svonavec did not deny the charge. He told the local paper, the Tribune-Democrat, “These discussions we had privately–irregardless of what numbers were thrown around. That’s what they were, private.”
But Svonavec’s position evolved. He declared that he would negotiate only with the Park Service and later denied that he had ever asked for $10 million. He insisted that he wasn’t holding out–that he was willing to sell to the government, but that the Park Service hadn’t yet made him an offer. (Svonavec also maintained that he would never accept money for the actual crash site, which he would eventually donate.)
For its part, the Park Service seems to have made little progress with Svonavec. According to the Tribune-Democrat, it contracted an independent appraisal of Svonavec’s property in 2005. The appraisal was rejected by the agency and never publicly released. In February 2006, the Park Service informed Svonavec that it has conducted its own appraisal of his land, pegging the value at $250,000, or $915 an acre. (In 2007, the Families offered Svonavec $550,000 plus $200,000 for expenses, which he allegedly rejected before talks broke down.) In March 2008, the Park Service hired a new outside contractor to perform another appraisal. The government rejected this appraisal, too, and also kept it from public view.
In October, Svonavec requested that the Park Service release the results of the two independent appraisals, but it refused. The Park Service now says that a third independent appraisal is in the works, but will not comment on when it will be finished or whether or not it will be made public.
In the midst of all this, Svonavec exercised some of his leverage. In July, he invoked a clause to terminate the Park Service’s license to operate the temporary memorial. Svonavec claimed that he merely wanted out of the agreement and was happy to let the NPS stay. The Park Service insisted that it would not operate on private property without a license. Shortly after Svonavec opted out of the agreement, the Park Service packed up the temporary memorial and moved it to an adjacent site, on land acquired by the Families.
It’s unclear how, or when, the dispute will be resolved. The statute creating the permanent memorial explicitly forbade the use of eminent domain by the federal government, but last year Senators Arlen Specter and Bob Casey Jr. sponsored an amendment which opens the door to federal action. County officials have said that they will not become involved in a taking, and the state government seems likely to take the same position. Which is why the Families petitioned the president to seize Svonavec’s land.
Momentum for the gargantuan memorial has slowed. Private fundraising has been weaker than expected. Construction was originally planned to begin in 2007, with the whole memorial to be completed in 2011. As deadlines passed, that schedule was replaced with a phased rollout. The new timetable calls for building the small center of the memorial, the “Sacred Ground” at the crash site, by 2011. The rest of the park, including the main bowl, the tower of wind chimes, the visitor center, the “healing wetlands,” and much else, is to be completed in phases at later dates, yet to be determined.
But even this scaled-back schedule supposes that all property acquisitions are completed by June 2009. Yet the combination of so many moving parts–an ambitious design-by-committee, layers of bureaucracy, multiple owners–make even the first, small phase seem a distant hope. That and the sense one gets that Svonavec and the Park Service could continue their dance for a good long time.
Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
