THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509170077
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CULPEPER LENGTH: Short : 32 lines
The owner of part of a Civil War battlefield says it will foreclose on the property sold last year to a company that plans to build an auto racetrack on the site.
Elkwood Downs L.P. president Lee Sammis said in a statement that his company was forced to foreclose because opposition to the racetrack made it impossible for Benton Ventures Inc. to make its payments on the land.
Benton Ventures' planned Formula One racetrack on the Brandy Station battlefield site has been besieged for over a year and a half by local preservationists.
The battlefield was the scene of the largest cavalry engagement of the Civil War.
The Culpeper-based Brandy Station Foundation filed a lawsuit in August against both Benton Ventures and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the regulatory agency that found the racetrack project would not destroy the land's historic resources or its federally protected wetlands.
Sammis suggested in his statement, released Friday, that Elkwood Downs would continue to try to develop the 500 acres. by CNB