Victory at a Va. Civil War Battleground
Builder Gains Approval for Development After Accommodating Preservationists

By Steven Ginsberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 27, 2002; Page B08

It's not often that a developer and Civil War buffs find themselves on the same side, but it happened last week in Prince William County on the site of an 1863 engagement called the Battle of Bristoe Station.

With barely agrumble, the Board of County Supervisors unanimously approved development plans for the battlefield that include hundreds of homes and commercial space. That was after the builder promised to preserve 127 acres and allow archaeologists to do an extensive search for unmarked soldiers' graves.

County officials and preservationists described the deal as a virtually unprecedented case of cooperation. The result, they said, is that nearly everyone got what they wanted. The developer got a project, preservationists got access to a battlefield that had been in private hands since the war, and county officials got both without a prolonged struggle.

"I think it is one of those rare situations involving a developer where everyone walked away satisfied," said county board Chairman Sean T. Connaughton (R-At Large).

The present-day non-battle of Bristoe is unusual in a region known as much now for its struggles between Civil War preservationists and developers as for battles between North and South.

Those involved in the deal said the development company, Centex Homes, succeeded where others have failed because it recognized from the start that preserving the battlefield was the path, not the obstacle, to the realization of its plans. Had the company not been willing to preserve some of the land, county officials and preservationists said they would not have been willing to accept development on any of it.

"Frankly, [Centex] took it beyond what we expected by a wide margin," said Planning Director Rick Lawson. "Once the ball was in the air, they were pretty remarkable in terms of their willingness to adjust their plans to accommodate the evidence that there was something worth preserving."

Skirmishes between builders and preservationists pop up nearly every time developers seek to build where soldiers once fought.

One of the more famous fights occurred a decade ago in Culpeper County on the site of the Battle of Brandy Station. There, more than 130 years after Confederate and Union troops engaged in a vast cavalry battle that kicked off the Gettysburg campaign, a developer and preservationists struggled bitterly for years over plans to build an office park and later a track for car races. The builder eventually went bankrupt and sold some of the land to a Civil War group.

Last fall, a divisive year-long fight near Winchester ended when a proposal for an industrial park on the Stephenson's Depot and Third Winchester battlefields was turned down by officials under intense pressure from preservationists. And just last week, a decision on a housing project near Chantilly in Fairfax County was put on hold because preservationists and the developer could not agree on a suitable plan for the site, which includes Civil War relics.

New Bristow Village, just south of Manassas, is planned as a mix of 520 homes and 175,000 square feet of office and commercial space designed as a 19th-century village with traditional neighborhood streets, alleys, greens and parks clustered on 214 acres of the 341-acre property. The battlefield will be transformed from farmland and woods into a passive Heritage Park, with walking paths and signs explaining the engagement there nearly 140 years ago.

On that piece of rolling terrain in October 1863, a bloody battle between Gen. Robert E. Lee's regiments and Federal troops left nearly 2,000 casualties, most of them from the South. It was a crushing loss for the Confederacy. The battle marked the end of the Gettysburg campaign and forced Lee to lead his troops on a southern retreat.

Jim Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Preservation Trust, said he had all but given up on preserving the site until he got an out-of-the-blue call from Centex.

"They said, 'What do you want?' And I drew a line based on historians, and they said, 'Fine.' It was about a 10-minute conversation," said Lighthizer, whose group will control and operate Heritage Park. "Occasionally, you have somebody in the land development business throw you a bone of a few acres, but for somebody to give you the entire core battlefield is truly remarkable."

At the last minute, Centex also answered the concerns of a number of other Civil War preservationists by agreeing to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans and historians to search the unprotected part of the site for unmarked graves before construction. If graves are found, they will be moved to the protected area.

If Centex was driven by a sense of history and corporate responsibility, the company also never lost sight of the bottom line, those involved said.

The company's decision to protect so much space made county officials amenable to allowing Centex to build almost as many homes in the remaining area as the zoning would have allowed for the full parcel, sparing the builder months, if not years, in costly and divisive battles, officials said.

Centex "saw this as a solution to a continuing long-term struggle," said John Foote, an attorney for the developer. "We could have satisfied [the county] with less, but it would have meant more political struggle."

Foote also noted that the homes will sit next to a park few neighborhoods can claim, increasing their value.

Those involved said the deal ought to become the norm for projects that conflict with history, noting that the two need not be at perpetual odds.

"What makes this unprecedented was not only did they work with us to protect the battlefield and graves," Connaughton said, "they definitely understood that they will reap economic benefits from this."

Said Foote, "If the circumstance presents itself where this kind of accommodation can be reached, you've got to be brain-dead not to pursue it."

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