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Battlefield artist Alfred R. Waud sketched Union troops carrying a wounded soldier on May 6, 1864, from Wal-Mart opponents enlisted 'Gens. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant' to fight a planned store at Wilderness. |
By RUSTY DENNEN
In a new online video, Gens. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee appear together, able to finally agree on one thing: Wal-Mart's plan to build a Supercenter on a portion of the Wilderness battlefield is preposterous.
The re-enactors' point is also driven home in a mass mailer sent by another group last week to 16,000 Orange County households.
As the world's largest retailer prepares an application for a special-use permit for a store at the intersection of State Routes 3 and 20, battle lines are being drawn.
The video was produced by Wal-MartWatch.com, an anti-Wal-Mart Web site, based in Washington, D.C. It is linked to anti-sprawl activist Al Norman, whom Fortune Magazine once labeled "Wal-Mart's enemy No. 1."
The four-page, full-color Orange mailer was sent out by the Warrenton-based Piedmont Environmental Council, which opposes the plan as much for its potential traffic impact as its effect on the historic setting. The PEC says there's a more suitable site closer to Lake of the Woods and away from the battlefield.
"I think everybody is waiting to see when the application is filed. Until then, we're not sure what's going to be in it," said Jim Campi, spokesman for the D.C.-based Civil War Preservation Trust, which fired the first salvo in opposition when the project was announced in July. Campi said the national group does not oppose a Wal-Mart per se, just the proposed location.
This much is known: The Arkansas-based retailer wants to build a 145,000-square-foot store on 55 acres north of Routes 3 and 20. The developer is JDC Ventures of Vienna.
Wal-Mart maintains that, since the tract is zoned for commercial use, a store there would be appropriate. And it has said it would modify the building design, set it back on the property, and add historical markers explaining the significance of the tract.
"We looked at a long list of available sites and ultimately settled on this particular location, said Wal-Mart spokesman Keith Morris.
"For us, it came down to the fact that it's zoned for this use and has been for some time."
He said the company understands opponents' concerns about the site, "but one thing that concerns us is that so many people expressed concerns when they never saw a sketch of what's proposed. I think a lot of the initial fears have been put to rest."
However, details of the plan have not been filed. Orange County Planner Kevin McMahan said, "I've heard rumblings from consultants that they are on the cusp" of filing an application. An initial site plan was rejected because it was not complete, and then the county Board of Supervisors adopted a "big-box" store ordinance, requiring a special-use permit for stores larger than 60,000 square feet.
ALTERNATE SITE?
Craig Rains of the Friends of Wilderness Battlefield said preservation groups are working on the assumption that Wal-Mart won't back down. The company has five stores in the area: two in Stafford, and one each in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania and Culpeper.
"Our people are calling their supervisors and telling them to have them look at someplace else," Rains said. One suggestion is that Wal-Mart find a site several miles to the west on Route 3 near Lake of the Woods.
Rains, who lives in that gated community, was among the opponents who met with Wal-Mart's Richmond attorney and the Vienna developer last week to talk about the application. He said they heard the same presentation Wal-Mart gave to the Lake of the Woods Civic Club weeks ago.
"Nothing has changed," Rains said. "We're thinking that even if Wal-Mart does submit a plan, it will be after the first of the year."
An umbrella group formed to fight the big-box store, the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition includes Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, the Civil War Preservation Trust, National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Parks Conservation Association, Piedmont Environmental Council and Friends of Fredericksburg Area Battlefields.
The National Park Service, which owns the historic Ellwood house and other land near Wilderness Corner, has also weighed in against the proposal, saying it's the site, not the store, that's wrong.
"We're not against Wal-Mart. We'd like to see them down the road somewhere," said Russ Smith, superintendent of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park.
"Wal-Mart's answer seems to be: It's zoned commercial, so we have no responsibility."
Barbara Bannar, executive director of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, said the organization has not taken an official position on the store, but that both commerce and tourism are important.
Still, "it would be logical for commercial growth to go on that property," she said. And with buffers in place, "it should not adversely affect the battlefield."
Bannar said local residents need such a place to shop, "and to keep tax dollars local, and the jobs."
MORE THAN A STORE
Dan Holmes, the Piedmont Environmental Council's director of state policy, said the issues go beyond Wal-Mart.
Wilderness Crossing, a much larger development on a 1,000-acre tract surrounding the Wal-Mart site, is also on the drawing board.
"It's a matter of the county putting a huge amount of land on the table for development," Holmes said.
Development attracts more development, and with it, traffic issues that must be addressed, he said.
The Wilderness battlefield, Holmes said, "was the first meeting [in battle] of Grant and Lee in what historians refer to as the beginning of the end of the Civil War. The next time they met was to sign a piece of paper in Appomattox. Do we want to do this" on significant sites around the region?
Eric Bull, a spokesman for Wal-MartWatch.com, said the company has built stores near other historic or cultural areas. For example, a Bodega Aurrera store, owned by a Latin America subsidiary, sits next to an Aztec site in Mexico City.
Al Norman, a longtime anti-Wal-Mart activist and the founder of Sprawl-Busters, is against the proposed Wilderness store and has been through a similar fight here before.
He was among those who successfully fought Wal-Mart's plan in the mid-1990s to build a store adjacent to Ferry Farm, George Washington's boyhood home off Route 3 in southern Stafford County.
Under intense public pressure, the retail giant opted for another site farther east on Route 3.
"Wal-Mart has a nasty habit of colliding with history," Norman said. "They did it at Ferry Farm, they're doing it again at the Wilderness battlefield. The only history Wal-Mart cares about is that day's gross receipts at its stores.
"History can't be bought and sold, so it's not a commodity Wal-Mart understands or cares about. Our American heritage has no economic value to them."
Reporter Clint Schemmer contributed to this story.
Related links:
Rusty Dennen: 540/374-5431
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
The Battle of the Wilderness, one of the Civil War's largest and most important conflicts, was the first clash between Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The battle, on May 5-6, 1864, began Grant's grueling Overland Campaign, which drained both armies and eventually brought Union troops to the gates of Richmond. More than 160,000 men fought along the Orange Turnpike (modern State Route 20) and the Orange Plank Road. Nearly 29,000 Americans were killed, wounded or captured in the fighting at The Wilderness. Today, more than 2,773 acres of the battlefield are part of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. The proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter is outside the congressionally authorized boundary of the park, but within the historical battle area. |
