![]() Last week’s agreement holds that the museum will be moved from Huntington Park to part of the land that comprises Endview Plantation. 2 is the museum, which now has the city’s support for its major expansion plans. The house would be restored and limited access provided the public. Part of the current plan is for the city to buy the adjacent and historic antebellum house, Lee Hall, and lease it to the manufacturer for use as a retreat. 1 is the city, which still has on the table a proposal by Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics of America to build a manufacturing plant that would employ 600 people on one of the city’s last major undeveloped tracts, Carleton Farm Industrial Park. Eric Gibson, president of the museum’s foundation, says the result is “a win-win situation.” City officials and representatives of the War Memorial Museum of Virginia have agreed on the museum’s future while preserving the city’s industrial potential. Pollution and traffic considerations, for example, must conform to policies designed to protect the city against harmful development, he said.In Newport News bickering has given way to dickering. The mayor added that he thinks many of residents’ concerns will be addressed as the development moves forward. “We’re contractually obligated at this point, and we’ve done the rezoning,” Frank said. Mayor Joe Frank said he has no intention of moving ahead with that idea, and he hasn’t heard from other council members that they support it, either. One opponent recently asked the City Council for a public hearing on the Endview mall, assuring the elected panel that enough opponents would come forward to warrant dropping the deal with Mall Properties. “It was devoid of some of the statutory requirements, and we feel it misstated the law as it applies to conditional zoning.” “The suit that was filed was vague,” said City Attorney Stuart Katz. The city’s response is a terse, two-page document that asserts there is no merit or legal basis for the suit. In addition to Quarstein’s articles, the city also this week responded to the lawsuit, which claims that Newport News improperly rezoned the Endview property to make way for the mall. “It is a choice to use controlled economic development to enable the preservation of a property rich in the history of Virginia and America.” “It is important for citizens of Newport News to know that the issue involving the Endview site and a proposed shopping mall is not a choice between historic preservation or economic development,” Quarstein wrote in one of his Daily Press articles. Maroney called much of the material being circulated by opponents “misinformation ” Quarstein, a city employee who often works closely with Civil War re-enactors, praised Newport News for saving part of the Endview Plantation for historic interpretation and for spending more money on preservation in 1996 than any other locality in the country. The most noticeable opponent of the mall, Citizens to Save Endview, has sent press releases, established an Internet site, sued the city and spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to city officials, all in hopes of defeating the plan. of New York City has proposed building a mall on 100 acres of city-owned land at the northern tip of Newport News. “All we wanted to do is clarify the information to the general public. ![]() “We’re trying to get the information out that the city has done an awful lot on historic preservation,” Maroney said. 11, also say that economic development is feasible alongside historic preservation. The columns, written by the city’s museums administrator, John Quarstein, and printed in the Daily Press Aug. The centerpiece of that campaign is City Manager Ed Maroney’s idea to submit three opinion pieces to the Daily Press that explain how much Newport News has done this year in the name of historic preservation. Still faced with solid opposition to a mall proposed for Endview Plantation, Newport News has launched a campaign of its own to alleviate concerns that the project is a bad idea. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close Menu ![]()
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