Orange officials ready to move on after Wal-Mart vote

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of a Wal-Mart, but the fight over the store isn't over yet.

Later yesterday, after the board's 4-1 vote at 1 a.m. to grant a special-use permit to allow the retailer to build a 133,481-squarefoot store near a Civil War battlefield, a loose-knit coalition of opposition forces was busy regrouping.

The Civil War Preservation Trust issued a news release that said the group would "carefully weigh options for continued opposition to this misguided proposal."

The National Trust for Historic Preservation offered on its Web site a form letter to Wal-Mart executives so its supporters could register opposition to the store. One of the group's officials said the fight would proceed on several levels.

"There's the very narrow tactic of persuading Wal-Mart not to act on the special-use permit," said Rob Nieweg, director of the National Trust's Southern field office.

"We do think Wal-Mart could still reverse course," he said.

The store is proposed for a 51-acre site near the intersection of state Routes 3 and 20. The location is across the street from the Wilderness Battlefield, site of the first in-war meeting of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Their coming together precipitated bloodshed that produced 29,000 casualties in two days.

Supervisor Zack Burkett said he's hoping for peace and quiet after two years of often-heated discussion about the store, but he said he's ready for anything.

"Now it's just wait and see what they're going to try," said Burkett, a self-styled history buff and Wilderness expert who voted in favor of the store. "They will try to find some legal excuse to stop this. This is a hell of a fundraiser for them. But we've been extremely careful."

The vote came at the end of a long, exhausting night in the auditorium of Orange County High School. A crowd of 400 or so showed up, and about 110 people signed up to speak.

Enough of the speakers took their full allotment of three minutes that the public hearing stretched from 6 p.m. to well past 10 p.m. Then the supervisors began debating, speaking and otherwise questioning points of the proposal.

They finally voted about 1 a.m. but not before some of them took the opportunity to rebuke their critics publicly.

"I realize what you're against," said Burkett, the first of the supervisors to speak. "I wonder if you realize what you're for."

After watching the debate in relative silence for two years, Supervisor R. Mark Johnson didn't mince words when it finally was his turn to speak.

He took particular aim at the preservationists who opposed the store on historic grounds. Saying their "putrid dishonesty is appalling," he called into question their motives, their intent and their execution.

"The fact of the matter is, they keep changing their story," he said.

"The history of Orange is not dirt. If Mount Vernon just got blown off the face of the Earth, would we think any less of George Washington?"

When a man in the audience voiced dismay, Johnson curtly said, "The public hearing is closed."

Nieweg said he found it unfortunate that Johnson took that approach.

"It's hard to hear," he said. "We understand how some of the technical issues are hard to understand. . . . But for Supervisor Johnson to impugn the integrity of the people, the preservationists who are testifying, that's beyond the pale. To make the leap that [we're] dishonest is really unfortunate."

Yesterday afternoon, Johnson wasn't backing off.

"Because of the need to be officially undecided, I've tried to be careful, to not be biased in my comments," he said. "I was finally able to speak my mind."

He said he's ready to move on.

"As far as the county is concerned, they're approved," he said.

Though the site has been zoned for commercial development since the 1970s, stores larger than 60,000 square feet require special-use permits such as the one Wal-Mart received.

The next step for the retailer is filing a site plan. If that's approved, the company then could begin bidding out the work of clearing the site and building the store.

If everything goes according to plan, the store could open as early as Christmas 2010.

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or zreid@timesdispatch.com.