NPS Buys Wilderness Tract Proposed For Development
By Deborah Fitts

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — The National Park Service has bought a 63-acre tract of the Wilderness battlefield that last year was threatened with development as part of “Wilderness Crossing,” a major commercial project.

Superintendent Russ Smith of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park said the $1.1 million purchase took place just before Christmas. The wooded property is on the north side of Route 20 just west of the Route 3 intersection and the final line of Union trenches.

Wilderness Crossing was to be a 400,000-square-foot shopping mall with a supermarket and hotel. The plans also called for making Route 20, the wartime Orange Turnpike, four lanes to access the project.

Smith said the purchase was possible because last year the Orange County supervisors rejected a proposal by developers Ken Dotson and Charles King III to rezone 177 acres, including this tract, for commercial use. Supervisors also voted thumbs-down in January 2007 to the notion of widening Route 20.

“People came together, groups and individuals, to oppose the rezoning and the expansion of Route 20,” Smith said. “It would have had big-box stores, movie theaters and the like. Once Mr. Dotson couldn’t develop it commercially, he wasn’t that interested in keeping it.”

Dotson had owned the 63 acres in question. It lies on the west side of the north-south-running trench, which is owned by the park. King, Dotson’s partner, continues to own 33 acres on the east side of the trench. King and others also own other adjacent properties, Smith noted, “and they probably still have ambitions” to develop.

The park had the $1.1 million in land-acquisition money available for the purchase. Smith said the price represented fair market value. Dotson and King bought roughly 100 acres a couple of years ago for $1.6 million.

Smith said the park was not talking to King about a purchase of his land, although it is within the park boundary and adjoins the trench. “We don’t have any money,” Smith explained, and there were “too many other things going on” in the way of land coming available for purchase.