Lawsuit keeps massive Wilderness Crossing project on hold
Lawsuit keeps massive Wilderness Crossing project on hold
Since March, Orange County has paid law firm $60,000 in taxpayer dollars to defend board's rezoning decision
In April 2023, the Orange County Board of Supervisors defied the wishes of many local residents and voted 4-1 to rezone 2,600 acres of land at the eastern end of the county. In its approval of the largest rezoning in county history, the board green-lighted a sprawling commercial and residential development called Wilderness Crossing.
But a month later, the project’s developers—KEG Associates III, LLC—encountered a big red light, as did the board and Orange County. American Battlefield Trust, Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, Friends of Wilderness Battlefield (all partners in the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition) and several private citizens are suing the county and the board of supervisors due to the proposed development’s close proximity to the Wilderness Battlefield, portions of which are part of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, and the site’s proximity to properties that the plaintiffs own. They are represented by Attorney Michael H. Brady of Whiteford, Taylor and Preston, L.L.P., a Richmond law firm.
Bordered by Route 3, Culpeper and Spotsylvania counties, and a stretch of the Rapidan River, the Orange County land at the heart of the dispute had been zoned mostly agricultural. It is now zoned for planned development-mixed use. The property, much of it forested, consists of 20 parcels owned by Charles “Chip” King and family. During last year’s public hearing on the proposed development, local businessman Kenny Dotson and Fredericksburg attorney Charles W. Payne Jr. represented KEG Associates III and King.
Wilderness Crossing promises to be no ordinary development, and the lawsuit, detailed in an 81-page petition, is no ordinary item on the supervisors’ agenda. Since March 2024, the county has paid outside legal counsel more than $60,000 in taxpayer money to defend the case, according to Orange County Administrator Ted Voorhees. Voorhees said that Andrew McRoberts with the law firm Sands Anderson is representing the county.
The suit filed in Orange County Circuit Court in May 2023 seeks to prevent the Wilderness Crossing project from happening. The petition asserts that the board of supervisors “gave a blank check to undisclosed interests to intensely develop, over several decades, hundreds of acres of forested, undeveloped land adjacent to the Wilderness Battlefield, the location of a key Civil War engagement in 1864.”
It argues that properties owned by the plaintiffs will suffer multiple ill effects if the development is allowed to proceed. Furthermore, the lawsuit “challenges the Rezoning to prevent flagrant abuses of the zoning process, to prevent the sale of the general welfare of residents of the Germanna-Wilderness Area and the destruction of their quiet use and enjoyment of their homes and lands for tax dollars and cash proffers, and to preserve the important historical and cultural resources of the Wilderness and Chancellorsville Battlefields for the use and enjoyment of generations to come.”
Battlefield named to 2024 list of “11 Most Endangered Historic Places”
The perceived threat to the historic site has drawn the scrutiny of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which named the Wilderness Battlefield Area to its 2024 list of “11 Most Endangered Historic Places.”
The National Trust states that the Battle of the Wilderness “marked a pivotal turning point in the Civil War” in May 1864, when large numbers of Confederate and Union troops fought on the site, and General Ulysses S. Grant and his troops then marched toward Richmond. “As approved, the [Wilderness Crossing] project could include millions of square feet of data centers and distribution warehouses, commercial space, thousands of homes, and road construction on previously undeveloped land where soldiers fought and died,” according to the National Trust’s online announcement.
Meanwhile, the American Battlefield Trust (ABT) argues on its website, “It isn’t just the battlefield that stands to suffer. If this mega-development is allowed to move forward, growth will come at the cost of current residents’ quality of life. Already congested roadways will be utterly overwhelmed by nearly 50,000 new vehicle trips along the area’s major arteries each day. Resident services will be stretched to the breaking point and beyond.”
Voorhees: “ABT has no responsibilities to wider issues of community development”
I asked Voorhees via email to respond to the ABT’s claims. He replied, “The Board of Supervisors spent many years collaborating with community stakeholders to develop a thoughtful small area plan for eastern Orange County known as the ‘GWAP’ (Germanna Wilderness Area Plan).
“The application that was approved is generally consistent with that plan and has numerous community benefits including, but not limited to, a public school site, a fire/rescue station site, a large public park, walking trails, access to new retail and entertainment opportunities, mitigation of abandoned mining sites, land dedication for a water supply reservoir, and a $4 million contribution to the county’s public facilities needs. Furthermore, the traffic impact to Route 3 would be mitigated by requirements for alternative intersection solutions and the construction of parallel access roads and limited access to Route 3."
Voorhees continued, “While we appreciate ABT’s work to preserve our community heritage sites, the Board of Supervisors is tasked with balancing many factors, including economic viability, tax rates, growth, housing demand, public safety, water supply and transportation.
“All of these factors went into negotiating the final outcome of the rezoning decision. ABT has no responsibilities to the wider issues of community development so their decision to simply be opposed is understandable. They are passionate about preservation, and hyperbolic statements (like referring to 50,000 vehicle trips per day—which would only be realized at the end of a 40–50-year build-out) are fairly common in efforts to oppose development.
“The ABT’s stance presents the current situation as an ‘either-or,’ which does not do justice to the decades of preservation work that has already taken place by both government agencies and NGOs. The value of our historic sites was not lost during the GWAP planning process. On the contrary, Orange County is fortunate to enjoy a great deal of preserved historic land. The Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park preserves and interprets over 8,000 acres in the region.
“That amount does not include the thousands of additional acres preserved by battlefield groups like the American Battlefield Trust and the Central Virginia Battlefield Trust. The implication that our regional battlefields are ‘threatened’ seems to state the opposite of reality, which is that we have a collection of well-protected battlefields that are regularly enjoyed by many, thanks to the existing public-private partnership,” Voorhees concluded.
American Battlefield Trust: Supervisors “refused our repeated requests” for a meeting
Jim Campi, the ABT’s chief policy and communications officer, has a very different take. In a lengthy rebuttal to Voorhees’s comments, Campi noted that this is not the first time historic preservation and environmental advocacy groups have fought to protect the historic battlefield. Many local residents will remember when Walmart proposed a “super store” next to the Wilderness Battlefield in 2009. In 2011, a lawsuit similar to the current one stopped that plan in its big-box tracks.
Campi wrote me, “As a result of [the Walmart-related] dispute, and to try to prevent future development controversies, the American Battlefield Trust and its partners in the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition invested nearly $200,000 in a consensus plan called the Wilderness Battlefield Gateway Study.
“This study provided guidance on how to develop the Wilderness Crossing property in a preservation-sensitive manner that would enable the landowner[s] to realize their development goals and still protect the Route 3 corridor and Wilderness Battlefield. Both the county and the Evans-King family participated in the study and agreed with its recommendations,” he wrote.
Campi argues that the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition’s investment of time and resources in the Wilderness Battlefield Gateway Study shows that “we have never taken an ‘either-or’ position on growth in the Route 3/Route 20 area. We have always attempted to be part of the solution—and could have been in this instance, but the board refused our repeated requests to sit down and discuss the Wilderness Crossing application. The board also turned down the National Park Service’s requests for a meeting.”
Campi acknowledged that the county incorporated some of the gateway study’s recommendations into its Germanna-Wilderness Area Plan and, as Voorhees stated, the Wilderness Crossing plan does incorporate elements of GWAP. However, Campi cautioned that “it is impossible to ignore that the scale of the Wilderness Crossing development goes far, far beyond the development intensity envisioned for the area prior to the Wilderness Crossing development application.”
“A vital piece of our collective American story”
Although not a party to the lawsuit, Historic Germanna in Locust Grove is a member of the Wilderness Battlefield Coalition, a group of historic preservation and environmental organizations. I wrote to Historic Germanna’s executive director, Jennifer Hurst-Wender, to get her thoughts on Wilderness Crossing. She responded, in part, that the battlefield and surrounding areas help to tell “a unique and multifaceted story of our nation's history—from the Indigenous peoples who first called this land home to the settlers, indentured servants, and enslaved individuals who reshaped the region and the countless untold stories of those who followed.
“While we are not against development, it must be carefully planned to ensure it does not come at the cost of destroying these irreplaceable resources. The proposed development threatens to undermine the integrity of the battlefield site, which is a vital piece of our collective American story,” she said.
Developers achieved “universal opposition” to rezoning application
Jennifer Heinz of Lake of the Woods is closely following the Wildnerness Crossing controversy. She was one of 37 people who spoke against the rezoning application during the public hearing on April 25, 2023. She told the board, “In these times of hyper-partisanship, I have to commend the developers of Wilderness Crossing for doing something that few are able to achieve—uniting Democrats, Republicans and Independents in, as far as I can tell, universal opposition to this rezoning application as presented.”
When I checked in with Heinz on Sunday, she praised Supervisor J. Bryan Nicol (District 5) for opposing the Wilderness Crossing application during his tenure on the Orange County Planning Commission and “holding the developer’s feet to the fire.” Now that Nicol is the supervisor for District 5 (which includes most of Lake of the Woods), she said, “He’s kept the community well-informed throughout all the twist and turns in this saga.”
As for her current assessment of the project, Heinz wrote, “I continue to have serious concerns about the impact this development will have on Orange County as a whole, not just on Locust Grove residents. Perhaps the most serious is the lack of water resources to supply a development of the size proposed. The drought this summer and resulting low levels of the Rapidan have brought into sharp relief the need for a reservoir to ensure an adequate water supply for the residents of the county. Orange County and the Rapidan Service Authority have to take steps to address this deficit before considering adding thousands of new homes and data centers.”
The Wilderness Crossing lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase. Campi said the next court date will probably be toward the end of this year or early in 2025.
Good mews from the Orange County Animal Shelter
The Orange County Animal Shelter is looking awfully nice these days. Last week, I visited the renovated, and very spiffy, cat headquarters—a large, airy space with new cabinets, countertops and plenty of room for cats and kittens in shiny new cages. One side of the room is for cats ready for adoption, and the other is for those needing medical care and a little extra TLC before the shelter can offer them to the public on Petfinder.com.
The cat play room has been moved and improved. With fresh paint, a new floor and windows bringing in lots of light, it’s now a thoroughly inviting place for cat ladies and cat gents to visit with prospective feline pals—and for the cats to get a break from their cages.
Animal Shelter Director Gina Jenkins flashed her trademark grin while telling me how pleased she is with the renovations she’s long envisioned: “We are ecstatic. We are so happy with the way things turned out.”
The canine side of the shelter is also getting a redo, including fresh paint and new flooring. Jenkins expects all the work to be done by the end of the year and noted that the county allocated $90,000 for the renovations.
Let’s all raise a tiny cup of catnip tea to toast a job well done!
Find “Sanctuary” at Woodberry Forest
There’s a cool new art exhibition at Woodberry Forest School’s Baker Gallery. Titled “Sanctuary,” the show features work in a variety of media by members of the Firnew Farm Artists’ Circle, a group of artists that painter Trish Crowe first convened at her Madison County farm 22 years ago. According to Crowe, the group started out small and gradually grew to “well over 40 member-artists from as many as eight counties in Virginia.”
In defining the new show’s theme, she said, “‘Sanctuary’ is a place that is safe, peaceful, and a comfort of refuge and rest in this noisy, chaotic world.” Woodberry Forest’s fine arts coordinator, Elena Kritter, curated the exhibition, which is Firnew’s eighth at the prep school.
Among the artists with work in the show are Ramey Campbell, Kitty Dodd, Katie Griffin Hand, Davi Leventhal and Barb Wallace, all of Orange County, and Orange County native Kelly Lonergan, retired chair of Woodberry’s art department and the show’s featured artist. The Firnew group’s executive director, Deb Erickson, told me that in collaboration with Crowe, Lonergan started the tradition of Firnew art shows at Woodberry. In Erickson’s view, the current exhibition “is the finest and most diverse show in our history.”
Located in the Walker Fine Arts Building, the Baker Gallery is open to the public Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday, 1-5 p.m. “Sanctuary” runs through the end of August.
I'm curious about the proposal for constructing data centers. What is proposed exactly? Reports I've read about data centers cause me to be concerned about the environmental impact that they would have in our community and to the world at large. I understand that they are very noisy, use thousands of kilowatts of electricity, and use millions of gallons of water.
Thank you so much for this. Please, continue to post about this. My property and where I grew up is less than 3 miles away . I do not want this. The data centers alone cause so much harm. 😞