Orange Planning Commission refuses to endorse controversial Wal-Mart

ORANGE — The Orange County Planning Commission deadlocked 4-4 Thursday night on a request for a permit to build a Wal-Mart near a Civil War battlefield, meaning the controversial proposal goes to the Board of Supervisors with a negative recommendation.
The five-member Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on the issue Monday. Supervisors are expected to vote on the matter after the hearing.

About 100 people showed up at Thursday night’s Planning Commission hearing, with speakers split about evenly for and against the store. The split was almost exclusively along geographic and community of interest lines.
At 4-4, the commission was similarly split. Two members were absent.
Residents of the county and surrounding areas strongly favored the store. Historic preservationists and those with an interest in nearby national parks did not.
If it receives a special-use permit, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will build a store of about 130,000 square feet near the intersection of state Routes 3 and 20. Depending on who is talking, the site is either in or near the Wilderness Battlefield, where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant met close to the end of the Civil War.

The site has long been zoned for commercial use but caps store size at less than half of what Wal-Mart wants. Two strip malls and a scattering of other single-building retail development already are near the site.
“We see it as a win-win,” said Kurt Christensen, a tree farmer from nearby Culpeper. “In these tough economic times, we can’t push away a large taxpayer. I’m into property rights. If they can do this to Wal-Mart, mom-and-pop businesses don’t stand a chance.”
“What difference does it make?” asked Bo Lamb, a logger from Madison decked out in full Confederate regalia and sitting atop a mule named Whiskey. “If it’s not Wal-Mart, something else is going in there. That’s just the way it is.”
Russ Smith, the superintendent of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, asked the commissioners to take a cautious approach.
“Orange County can have development and premier tourism attractions,” he said. “But please don’t let a special place become just another place.”
Daniel R. Holmes, director of state policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council, said he was holding out hope for Wal-Mart to consider alternate sites.
The better site, he suggested, was a few miles down state Route 3, nearer the Lake of the Woods subdivision that includes more than 3,000 houses.
“This is more a message for Wal-Mart,” he said.

Art MacEwan, an area resident since 1959, said he was amused at the desire to preserve the site.
“I wouldn’t honor the ground, I’d honor the men,” he said. A local cemetery, he said, could benefit greatly from a touch of the time and energy the Wal-Mart opponents have expended, he said.
“That place, I would think, would be an embarrassment to them,” he said of its unkempt appearance.
He said the issue was as simple as finding something new to wear.
“Go find a shirt in Orange,” he said. “You can’t.”
A row in front of MacEwan, Jack Snyder was hoping the retailer would come to Orange but not to the Wilderness site.
“I’m not opposed to Wal-Mart,” he said. “Just the site.
“I think they’re flexible. They’re smart businessmen.”

Like MacEwan, he said he wants better shopping options, just not there.
The hearing was a reprise of a May meeting, after which the Planning Commission approved the zoning application on a 5-4 vote.
The Board of Supervisors was set to vote on the issue late last month, but its public hearing was canceled a few hours before it was slated to begin when it was discovered that the earlier hearing had not been advertised twice as required by state law.