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Orange supervisors reject bid by two plaintiffs to settle Walmart lawsuit out of court Date published: 11/13/2010
BY ROBIN KNEPPER
Two of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit to block construction of a Walmart Supercenter in the Wilderness battlefield area have been turned away in their bids to resolve the issue out of court. Board of Supervisors Chairman Lee Frame said Dwight Mottet, a board member and past president of Friends of the Wilderness Battlefield, and Craig Rains, a member of the group and editor of its newsletter, recently asked him if he would facilitate a discussion between them and all the supervisors about settling the yearlong lawsuit. After contacting each of the supervisors, Frame said he told Mottet and Rains Thursday that none was interested in meeting with the two. Frame said the men wanted to discuss Walmart's moving its planned Supercenter to another location in the county, a subject that supervisors have consistently said was not an issue for them address. Walmart officials repeatedly have stated that they looked at all commercially zoned real estate along the State Route 3 corridor and the parcel they selected was the only one that met their criteria. Bob Rosenbaum, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said yesterday that Frame raised the possibility of a discussion several months ago, but health problems prevented Mottet from following up until recently. Frame said he did not suggest a meeting. Rosenbaum said Mottet and Rains were hoping to have a general discussion about resolving the lawsuit, not to specifically talk about a new location for the store. The plaintiffs are challenging a special-use permit supervisors approved for the 138,000-square-foot Supercenter more than a year ago. The Walmart is planned as an anchor store of a 240,000-square-foot retail development a quarter-mile from the intersection of State Routes 3 and 20 and the entrance of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The plaintiffs argue that the land is part of the Civil War battlefield and the permit approval was invalid because the county's zoning ordinance didn't have a provision to consider a property's historical significance. That 51.5-acre parcel is an area designated for commercial development in the county's Comprehensive Plan. It has been zoned commercial for more than 30 years, and other commercial development already exists at the Routes 3/20 intersection.
What's wrong with a little conversation? Certainly sounds cheaper...
... Let me get this straight.
The plaintiffs in the Walmart lawsuit ask to meet with the Orange County BOS to settle, and not one of the supervisors "was interested in meeting with" them?
Er, what? Wouldn't that be the best way to get this whole thing over with and save the county a ton of money?
It's call dialoguing. You folks in the government should try it sometime.
You have a losing case, but thank you for your efforts to expose the irresponsibility and incompetence of the Orange County BOS,
Send those damned fools packing. They are nothing but PITA's who have nothing better to do than to tell someone what they can or can't do with their own land. Fools!!!
You six folks are costing all of us huge amounts of money to satisfy your personal interests. The war is long over, there is plenty of room set aside for memorials, and there is little evidence that the Wal-Mart location had much at all to do with the war. Drop your suit and get over it. We are tired of you people running up our taxes and distracting County employees. It is a shame that you guys will not have to pick up the county's legal costs when you lose this case and the store is built.
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