The Fort Adams Trust Launches a Corporate Membership Drive

April 8, 2011 - PRLog -- NEWPORT, RI-   The Fort Adams Trust (www.fortadams.org) is creating a new way to get involved in saving the nation’s largest historic fortification.  Focusing on Newport and Bristol counties, the member drive will seek to broaden the Trust’s base of support with business owners who will enjoy special benefits for themselves and their employees while contributing to the preservation of a community landmark.  

“Fort Adams is good for business,” according to Ray Berberick, Vice President of the Trust and coordinator of the member drive.  “Every year hundreds of thousands of people visit the Fort for recreation, concerts, tours and special events.  All of this activity stimulates the local economy while helping to preserve a National Historic Landmark.”  A recently completed master plan for the Fort envisions more visitors and more activities with the goal of enhancing the Fort as a destination for Newport and for the state.

Several new initiatives are underway at the Fort envisioned by the master plan.  Open the Fort will secure interior openings surrounding the 6.5 acre Parade Field to allow visitors to enjoy the Fort on self-guided tours, enabling many more people to enter and learn about the Fort than is now possible with the current guided tours.   The intended completion date for this project is 2012 and will utilize the funding approved by the voters in the 2010 Open Space and Recreation Bond Issue.  Bay Walk will guide hikers, joggers, bikers and others around the perimeter of the park on a two mile route with spectacular ocean views and past gun emplacements, memorials, and other historic features in the park.

Historic Fort Adams was constructed over a period of 33 years from 1824-1857 and contains features found in no other fortifications in North America.  The Fort Adams Trust is a private nonprofit organization that partners with the state to keep Fort Adams open to the public and to raise monies for its preservation.  More information about the Fort and its history and about the new Corporate Membership Drive may be found on the Fort Adams Trust website www.fortadams.org.

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Founded as a Non-profit in 1994, the mission of Fort Adams Trust is to direct and support the stabilization, restoration, maintenance and operation of Fort Adams as a public historic site.