ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 4, 1996 TAG: 9603040055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STAFFORD
SOURCE: Associated Press
Opponents of Wal-Mart's plans to build a superstore next to George Washington's boyhood home gathered over the weekend to attack the project for historic and economic reasons.
More than 200 people showed up for a rally Saturday in south Stafford County, carrying signs saying ``No Wal-Mart By George'' and cheering on Al Norman, a national crusader against urban sprawl.
``I like to compare Wal-Mart to a cheap pair of underwear - they keep creeping up on you,'' said Norman, a Massachusetts health care lobbyist who successfully fought to keep Wal-Mart out of his hometown of Greenfield in 1993.
Wal-Mart has stores in Spotsylvania County just west of Fredericksburg and in northern Stafford County. Norman said the area doesn't need a third.
``They know the price of everything and the value of nothing,'' he said of the Arkansas-based company. ``And the county supervisors, they deserve a great big cherry pie in the face for ever letting this happen.''
The Richmond Group has proposed putting a 93,000-square-foot Wal-Mart and a 30,000-square-foot shopping center on 25 acres east of Ferry Farm, Washington's boyhood home. The store would have a Colonial-style facade, and the properties would be separated by 50 feet of trees and bushes.
Ferry Farm represents a portion of the estate where Washington lived from age 6 to 20, and where he is said to have thrown a coin across the Rappahannock River and chopped down his father's cherry tree.
The store site, which the Richmond group has contracted to buy from the Samuel Warren family, was zoned commercial in 1990. That happened only after the Warrens gave about 40 acres of the former Washington estate to the county, a donation that includes what is believed to be the foundation of the actual Washington home.
LENGTH: Short : 42 linesby CNB