By Clint Schemmer
Opponents of the Walmart Supercenter planned on the Wilderness battlefield are mounting a legal challenge against the project.
This afternoon in Orange County Circuit Court, a lawsuit is to be filed on behalf of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Friends of Wilderness Battlefield, and residents of Orange and Spotsylvania counties.
The plaintiffs will contest the Orange supervisors’ Aug. 25 decision granting a special-use permit for a 240,000-square-foot retail development near the eastern-Orange entrance to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The 138,000-square-foot Walmart would anchor the center, which is on the Wilderness battlefield.
Historians consider the battlefield, where armies led by Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first clashed 145 years ago, one of the nation's most endangered Civil War sites.
The legal challenge contends the supervisors' 4-1 decision was "flawed in numerous respects.”