Biddlecomb Column: Wal-Mart: the revenge

Anyone who has lived in Virginia for more than a decade should have seen this coming.

The folks at Wal-Mart had crunched the numbers. By taking the number of households, demographics, expendable income and existing retail space into account, the mega retailer adjusted its slide rules,
took out a map and decided to drop its newest store next to the Wilderness Battlefield in Orange County where 29,000 Confederate and Union soldiers were shot, stabbed and burned to death in the
spring of 1864.

The Wilderness — as it is called — is not a remote location in the Old Dominion’s southwestern highlands. It has nothing to do with the high planes where Indians and buffalo once roamed. No, the
Wilderness is an area of woods with thick, overgrown brush near the confluence of the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers west of Fredericksburg.

It’s only “wilderness” if you’re a Union general trying to move a 100,000-man army on to Fredericksburg and eventually Richmond. It’s only wilderness if you’re Gen. Robert E. Lee trying to rally a regiment
of Texans to defend your home state against the above said army.

Other than that, it’s just a bunch of woods.

At least that’s what Wal-Mart thought when it decided to set up shop next door.

As I said, anyone who opened a newspaper around these parts in the late 1990s knows exactly where this was headed. It’s like a clash of two armies.

In 1996, Wal-Mart decided the people of southern Stafford County (outside Fredericksburg) were underserved by their big-box values of cheap, “made in the USA” merchandise. Wal-Mart, which had made
a name for itself in the 1980s for providing valuable retail services to the rural America that had no “downtowns,” was now having success in suburbia — taking much of small town America with it.

The Stafford site, however, was proposed right next to George Washington’s boyhood home at Ferry Farm. It was there the future father of our country threw a silver dollar (or some sort of currency)
across the Rappahannock. This location makes the legend that much more believable considering the width of the river.

An outpouring of protest from conservationists and nearby residents forced Wal-Mart to retreat to a location just off Va. Route 3. It was like stopping Gen. Lee at Gettysburg.

That’s why it was surprising to see Wal-Mart march right into the Wilderness and gain approval for a 130,000 square-foot superstore near the site where Gen. Joe Hooker stumbled (perhaps drunk) into
the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863 and where Gen. Ulysses Grant nearly sacrificed his army a year later.

To be honest, Wal-Mart @ The Wilderness (as I think it should be called) is not in the middle of a battlefield. It’s located north of the battlefield at the intersection of Va. Routes 3 and 20, where a number
of gas stations and small businesses already exist. It was also commercially zoned (though not for a 130,000 square foot building). It was this zoning that gave Wal-Mart a decisive edge.

Still, protests had been vocal. Oscar-winning actor and area resident Robert Duvall, who portrayed Gen. Lee in the film “Gods and Generals,” spoke out against the store. Even Gov. Tim Kaine and House
Speaker William Howell (whose wife was a member of the Ferry Farm protest a decade earlier) joined forces to urge Wal-Mart to find a different location.

Wal-Mart, which rarely loses these cases, proceeded slow and steady like the tortoise. Despite a visible protest that garnered national attention, they crept forward. When the local planning commission
voted not to recommend approval of the special use permit needed to set up shop, the retailer took it’s case to the Orange County Board of Supervisors, which voted 4-1 this week to approve Wal-Mart’s
request.

Robert Duvall was nowhere to be found, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and there have been no reports of the Wal-Mart CEO waking up with a horse head in his bed (that’s a reference to the
Duvall character from “The Godfather” in case anyone thinks this great actor would harm a horse, or a CEO).

According to news reports, most of the speakers at this crucial meeting spoke in favor of bringing in America’s biggest retailer of Chinese-made goods.

Ten years later, Wal-Mart got its revenge.

Where next for Wal-Mart? You’ve got to think Appomattox is on a short list.

Alfred Biddlecomb is the former editorial page editor for the Potomac News and the Manassas Journal Messenger.