Wal-Mart provokes debate in Orange

ORANGE -- For a block or two on either side of the train tracks, Main Street in this quaint Piedmont town looks like something straight from a movie set.

There's a classic courthouse with a clock tower, a Colonial Revival train station with a green tile roof, and storefronts opening onto the sidewalk.

It's the kind of place where people on the street know each other and where locals don't mind chatting up strangers.

There's only one thing missing, they say.

"Go buy yourself a dress shirt in Orange and bring it back and show me," Sandra Watson said as she poured coffee for the late breakfast crowd early last week at Jean's Place Family Restaurant. "You can't do it. You can't buy anything here."

"There's only one grocery store, and all it has is limp broccoli," a customer said as she walked past the table.

Elsewhere in the county, a battle is brewing over a Wal-Mart proposed for a spot near a Civil War battleground.

The people in the town of Orange look on in envy. They want that Wal-Mart.

"We need things in this town," said Jean Brown, owner of Jean's Place. "I don't just want a Wal-Mart. I want a Wal-Mart Supercenter."

Up and down Main Street, residents, shop owners and assorted others expressed a similar sentiment one afternoon last week. But the open-arms approach has not been universal.

A group of celebrities, historians and out-of-state political leaders -- including actors Robert Duvall and Ben Stein; filmmaker Ken Burns; congressmen from Vermont and Texas; and the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation -- has banded together to fight a proposed Wal-Mart in the east end of the county.

They oppose the site, just north of state Routes 3 and 20, because it sits about 1 mile from the entrance to a Civil War battlefield called the Wilderness.

The area has been zoned for commercial use for decades, but the Orange County Planning Commission had to consider the application because of the size of the store. It approved a special-use permit for the store on a 5-4 vote late last month. The Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on the issue July 27 and is expected to vote on the permit in early to mid-August.

But the fight in Orange isn't simple.

The preservationists are keeping up their opposition, and they plan to have a major presence at the public hearing.

Meanwhile, county residents are beginning to split on the issue of the location of the store. People in the town of Orange say they want the Wal-Mart near them -- the closer, the better, not 23 miles down the road at an intersection that's more suburban Fredericksburg than rural Orange County.

But elected officials and Wal-Mart executives say that isn't likely.

"It's the only site we've identified that we'll move forward with," said Keith Morris, a spokesman for the company.

"I'd like to have it in downtown Orange, too, but I don't think it's my job as an elected official to tell them where to go," Supervisor Zack Burkett said. "To me, it's go or no go."

. . .

The problem in Orange is that there are two distinct population centers, and Wal-Mart has opted to be near the larger, growing one in the east end, where Orange meets Culpeper and Spotslyvania counties.

The town of Orange is stagnant, residents say, pointing to the lack of shopping options.

"When I was growing up, there were stores all up and down this street," Brown, who has spent all of her 69 years in the town, said as she stood in front of her restaurant on Main Street. "It just got to be where there's nothing here."

But you can't buy much in the eastern end of the county, either.

The site of the proposed Wal-Mart is near a 4,000-home development. Several smaller developments are nearby. The area is home to at least half the county's population.

Shopping options include, again, a single grocery store -- lack of food stores being the chief complaint throughout the county -- a pharmacy, a gas station and a convenience store.

"The lack of a grocery store, the lack of retail, is what led us to the site in the first place," Morris said.

Rob Nieweg, the southern field office director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, doesn't dispute the need for more retail in the area, but he does question the location.

"If the area can handle retail, it can handle it 2 miles away," he said.

He said his group's fear is that Wal-Mart "will open the door for a great deal more" development.

He pointed north on Route 3, where national retailers have filled both sides of the highway as it approaches Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg. There, the sprawl reaches for miles back toward Orange.

The people in Orange want some of that sprawl, or at least the financial benefits that come with it.

"Right now, those people live in the county, but they don't spend their money in the county," said Stephen Grannis, a real estate agent whose office is in downtown Orange. "So the good part is, [the store] is in Orange County, so it'll help the tax base."

Burkett said he, too, would like to see the tax base increase but that he can see both sides of the issue. He hasn't decided how he'll vote.

"I ran for office 18 months ago on a campaign of saving the Wilderness," he said, referring to a since-shelved plan of widening Route 20 as it winds through the battlefield area. "I think this is the best way to save the battlefield. You'll have commercial use for the property, but it'll be tasteful.

"I feel like they're offering us the best chance to save the battlefield, considering that those 50 acres are zoned commercial."

They have been for decades.

Eugene Triplett has taken advantage of that zoning for years. He opened the Wilderness Center Pharmacy as an original tenant in a short strip mall on the north side of Route 3 about a quarter-century ago. Late last week, he opened a coffee shop in the spot next door.

He's not worried.

"I don't worry about anything I can't control," he said. "I know my customers, and I can take care of them."

The only thing that puzzles him is the location.

"There are Wal-Marts in Fredericksburg . . . and Culpeper," he said. "So why here, in the middle?"

. . .

That "why here?" is what the people of Orange are asking.

"I'd like to have it closer to Orange," said Ruth Van Wart, a retired teacher from New York's Long Island who has lived in the town for about 23 years.

So would Sherri Lutz, the owner of Sherri's Shoppe, a gift store across the street from Jean's Place.

"I don't know why they're putting it in that end of the county," she said.

She said she had no concern about the competition.

"I don't think it's going to hurt me," she said. "People who want to shop at Wal-Mart are going to shop at Wal-Mart.

"I don't think it'll kill Main Street, unless maybe it's on Main Street."

Even that, said Grannis, the real estate agent, would be hard. "These stores have been dropping like flies without [Wal-Mart]," he said.

Burkett said he's expecting a fight at the end of the month during the public hearing.

"I expect they'll hit us with everything they've got," he said. "But what are they going to tell me? I have a constituent who calls me and says he can't afford his prescriptions unless Wal-Mart comes in. Am I going to listen to a dozen guys in California who don't know where the battlefield is?"

Nieweg of the National Trust said it's not that simple.

"This is the battlefield," he said. "It's not part of the park, but it was part of the battlefield."

Burkett, a self-styled amateur historian, said he has maps that prove otherwise.

"Orange County is one of the most historic places in the country," he said. "Oddly, this is one of the least historic places in Orange."

He said the land was a thick strand of trees during the Civil War.

"Other than maybe a few Yankee deserters, there weren't any soldiers there," he said.

Nieweg said he was convinced it was a battleground. And that aside, it's certainly in view of the site.

"But this is Orange County," Burkett said. "Other than the bottom of a few wells, everything is in the view shed of something historic."

Contact Zachary Reid at (804) 775-8179 or .