Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dropping plans to build a supercenter store near a Civil War battlefield in Virginia, effectively ending a court battle scheduled to go to trial this week in Orange County. In their announcement Wednesday morning before the trial over the site was slated to begin, Wal-Mart attorneys said they planned to work with county officials to identify another site for development in the county. The Bentonville, Ark., retailer had planned a 143,000-square-foot store on Route 3 just outside the limits of the Wilderness Battlefield national park.
The withdrawal is a highly unusual move for Wal-Mart, which is courted by local officials for its tax revenue and job creation and typically comes out on the winning side of site protests.
County officials and historic preservation groups said they were stunned by the decision.
Attorney Sharon E. Pandak said the county was “disappointed” with the decision and that officials were concerned the retailer would not choose another site.
“The county is anxious to have that assurance demonstrated substantially by Wal-Mart meeting with the county in the coming month to move forward,” she said.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Lee Frame said several other sites on Route 3 are viable, although not all are zoned commercial.
Preservationists had fought the development after the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved the special use permit for the 55-acre site in August 2009.
“What we were so concerned about what the absolute transformation of that intersection into large-scale development,” said Robert Nieweg, director of the southern field office for the National Historic Trust. “We never opposed economic development — it just has to be compatible.”
Wal-Mart has argued the store would be at an intersection with other retailers. A company spokesman did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Those opposed to the site in Locust Grove, about one mile from the park entrance, included Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Nieweg said the trust plans to issue a land-use study this year with guidelines on future development in the area.
Historians consider the Battle of the Wilderness, one of four battlefields in the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial, a turning point in the war. An estimated 182,000 Union and Confederate troops fought over three days in 1864, totaling roughly 30,000 casualties. The war ended 11 months later.
Ulysses S. Grant’s headquarters and senior officer encampments were near the proposed store site and Union casualties were treated there, according to testimony submitted by McPherson.
Pandak said the county found no events of historical significance that occurred on the land.
