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Mullins awaits ruling

July 20, 2003 1:08 am

Once again, John Mullins is waiting for government officials to make a ruling that affects the nearly 800 acres he owns on State Route 3.

But the Spotsylvania County funeral-home owner is not sweating the Army Corps of Engineers' decision, which could come this week, on a permit that would allow for six road crossings over streams on the site. He's not worried about talk that preservation groups might sue the corps if the permit is granted.

"It's not going to drag things out for me," Mullins says. "I have alternatives. We're going to bridge it."

Mullins means that he would proceed with the more costly option of building bridges over the stream crossings instead of culverts. The bridges would not require the corps' permission.

"Whether I get a permit or whether I don't, I've got five contracts on the desk," Mullins says.

Mullins has been trying to develop his land since a couple of years after he bought it in 1995 for $2.8 million. He had planned to sell the land to a developer who wanted to build a village called Chancellorsville, but that fell through when the county refused to rezone the property earlier this year.

Now Mullins is back to a previous plan--a subdivision and some offices and small retail stores.

In December 1999, the Board of Supervisors granted Mullins a rezoning that allowed businesses on 55 acres. The remainder of the land remained zoned for 225 homes. Critics questioned the timing of the 6-1 vote, which happened at the last meeting before four new members joined the board.

It was at that time that the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust first expressed interest in buying some or all of the farm from Mullins. Historians say part of the farm saw fighting on the first day of the Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville.

CVBT officials say two of the group's board members approached Mullins at supervisors meetings to find out his asking price for the farm. They say he told them to see his attorney and walked away; Mullins says he doesn't remember the encounters.

On Feb. 2, 2000, Mullins' attorney wrote a letter to John D. Mitchell, who was CVBT president at the time. He invited the group to meet with Mullins Feb. 15, but set some conditions.

"The representatives that come from your organization must be authorized to negotiate for and bind your organization," wrote attorney Jimmy Hilldrup. "You must come to the table with a firm offer. This is not an exploratory meeting."

Mitchell wrote back to request a delay to give the CVBT board time to meet, because no individual member could speak for the organization. He also addressed Mullins' conditions.

"I'm sure that you realize that this is a large and complex project for the trust to undertake. I hope the stated conditions are not so firm that we will be precluded from discussing them with your clients," Mitchell wrote.

CVBT members were also operating without an important factor--Mullins' asking price. The group would have to raise or borrow the money to pay him.

In a letter dated Feb. 11, 2000, Hilldrup set a Feb. 19 meeting date. "After the 19th we will not be able to schedule additional meetings. We will also have made commitments, which will prevent us from opening negotiations with you again," he wrote.

CVBT officials say the letter was postmarked Feb. 16 and did not arrive until Feb. 17. Mitchell faxed a response to Hilldrup on the 18th, advising that he could not attend the meeting the next day because of a longstanding previous commitment.

In fall 2001, Mullins called Anne Rowe, a former CVBT board member who he thought was still on the board. He said he told her a developer was about to put the farm under contract and that he wanted to give the CVBT a chance to buy it for the same price. Mullins did not disclose the price.

Rowe, the wife of the publisher of The Free Lance-Star, says she told Mullins she was no longer on the board. "I told him to call John Mitchell," she says. "I gave him no reason to think I could do anything about it."

Mullins says Rowe did tell him she wasn't on the board, but said she would deliver the message and someone would get back to him by the end of that week.

There apparently were no other communications between Mullins and the CVBT after that conversation.

Mullins announced Dec. 1 that Dogwood Development Group of Reston had signed a contract to buy his place. The developer planned to build a community of 2,350 homes and 2 million to 3 million square feet of offices and homes and call it the Town of Chancellorsville.

Dogwood later scaled back those plans, but county supervisors rejected the project in March after hours of public comments. Preservationists spoke of saving a national treasure, while county residents warned the project would mean more traffic on Route 3, more children to educate and more unsightly sprawl.

In the months since the Dogwood decision, Mullins has moved forward with seeking a permit from the corps to pursue his original plan. He has promised to donate some acreage along Route 3 for a tourist stop.

And he has been listening to offers from developers. He says land values have doubled since Dogwood signed its contract, and that four of the five offers he is considering are more lucrative than Dogwood's.

The preservation groups have not given up on buying the land. The Civil War Preservation Trust met with Mullins and was told he wanted $40 million, a figure trust officials called "almost laughable." The farm's assessed value is $5.6 million.

Preservation groups have been trying to get the corps to deny Mullins a permit. As part of its review, the corps may also consider the historical significance of a tract and how that would be affected by development.

But in May, the corps took the unusual step of ending consultations with various interested parties after the agency determined that agreement on how the project should proceed was unlikely.

That triggered a review by the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which held a public hearing in Spotsylvania July 1. Mullins also met with council members and gave them copies of letters between his attorneys and preservation groups. He says he expects the council's report to the corps to be fair.

The council's recommendations on how the corps should proceed will be outlined in a letter to the Secretary of the Army. That letter was to have been sent Friday.

Since the council is an advisory body, the corps is not bound by its recommendations.

Jim Campi, director of policy and communications for the Civil War Preservation Trust, says he's hoping for a compromise.

"I suspect [the council] will be calling for the corps to reopen consultations," Campi said Friday. If that's the recommendation and the corps issues the permit anyway, Campi said, the preservation group is prepared to sue.

"We believe they [the corps] have left themselves wide open to potential litigation," Campi says.

The trust contends that the corps has, among other things, improperly defined the permit area and the potential effect of Mullins' project, and that more fieldwork is required at the site.

Bruce F. Williams, chief of the corps' Northern Virginia regulatory office, has said the agency has done a proper review and that nearly a dozen consulting parties were given ample opportunity to comment.

Williams defended the corps' record on historic preservation Friday, saying the agency has helped preserve 600 acres of historically significant land on 16 different projects in the Fredericksburg area over the past 12 years.

Bruce Milhans, a spokesman for the advisory council, said Friday that the letter was being prepared and that he could not comment on its contents.

Milhans said the council acts in this role once or twice a year when permitting agencies are unable to reach a consensus on projects with interested parties.

New CVBT president Michael Stevens, a local dermatologist, is trying a different approach. He wrote an open letter to Mullins that appeared in The Free Lance-Star's editorial section in June. "If there have been miscommunications between us in the past, I ask for forgiveness and understanding," he wrote.

"I saw this getting out of hand," says Stevens, who wants another chance to meet with Mullins. He hasn't heard back from him.

"We're all honorable people who love the community," Stevens says, referring to his group's members and Mullins. "We want to find a win-win situation, but that requires both sides sitting down."

Mullins says he has no comment on Stevens' letter, but says his family has given a lot back to the community.

"We would have been willing to share some more if we had been approached differently," he says.