THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608040059
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER AND MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: 165 lines
It sounds like a David vs. Goliath struggle: Citizens, environmentalists and Civil War buffs joining hands to fight Newport News City Hall and New York developers who want to turn parts of a historical site into a shopping mall.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian has sided with mall opponents. And a lawsuit against the mall has been filed by a group called Citizens To Save Endview - Endview being a 310-acre wooded tract with ties to famed American battles and the drinking water supply for much of Newport News.
Beneath this story line lies another - of corporate intrigue and what appears to be a grass-roots campaign financed covertly by a competing mall developer to sway public opinion against the proposed Endview mall.
All of which leads to another view of the struggle: Is David just another Goliath, using local emotions and a thick wallet to push hot-button issues, such as historic preservation and environmental protection, to fight off a rival business venture?
Members of Citizens To Save Endview won't say who is paying for their efforts and their lawyers, who include two attorneys from a reputable Norfolk law firm and a Pittsburgh attorney who has worked against a mall project in Pennsylvania.
They insist that the real issue is not their bank account, but poor city planning and threats to local heritage and water on the Peninsula.
``I'm not going to get into that,'' Ted Talay, a Hampton engineer who re-enacts Civil War battles as a hobby, said when asked about the group's funding. ``I'm not commenting on the money part of this.''
Other members would not discuss the group. Some declined to speak to reporters, referring questions to their attorneys in Norfolk.
One of the keys to untangling this complicated drama has nothing to do with Endview and lies hundreds of miles away in Altoona, Pa. There, Cecil W. Snyder tells of a similar veiled campaign in his Pennsylvania city by the same competing mall developer in Newport News - Crown American Realty Trust.
Three years ago, Snyder recalled, a public relations specialist from Washington, D.C., named Linda Schwartz contacted him with a generous offer.
``The people she represented furnished me with the money to run ads in the paper'' against a proposed mall in surrounding Logan Township, Snyder said.
A 77-year-old Altoona City Hall watcher, Snyder was against the new mall project but was having trouble drumming up support for his cause.
After the call from Schwartz, checks totaling $709 from representatives of Crown American, which owns the existing Logan Valley Mall in Altoona, paid for three days worth of local newspaper ads, Snyder said. They listed Snyder as the secretary of a group named Concerned Citizens of Altoona. Suddenly his one-man cause came alive.
``A TV station called and wanted to do an interview about my new group,'' Snyder said. ``I told them, `What new group?' I didn't know what they were talking about.''
Crown American also owns Patrick Henry Mall in Newport News. And Linda Schwartz is busy these days compiling news releases for local newspapers in the name of Citizens to Save Endview.
She has recruited local environmentalists, is distributing buttons and fliers against the proposed Endview mall, and solicited support from Princeton University Civil War historian James M. McPherson, author of the award-winning book, ``The Battle Cry of Freedom.''
She also has set up a special Web page on the Internet, urging citizens to join the fight. It includes computerized pictures of the scenic property and the text of McPherson's letter expressing dismay with the mall proposal.
Schwartz, reached at her office in Washington, would not discuss her role in the group or how she became involved. Nor would she say if she was working for Crown American.
The Endview project is a cooperative venture between the city of Newport News, which owns the land, and Mall Properties Inc., based in New York.
The city agreed to sell 100 acres - located at Jefferson Avenue and Yorktown Road in the mostly undeveloped north end of the city - to Mall Properties in May.
The New York company already owns Coliseum Mall in Hampton. The Endview project, as planned, would be a two-story complex encompassing 1 million square feet of retail space - similar in size to Lynnhaven Mall. The price tag: between $75 million and $100 million.
For its part, Mall Properties is staying out of the fray. A spokesman in New York said the company is moving forward with due diligence and preliminary design planning.
``We respect anybody's right to oppose the mall. We hope it would be done openly and in public,'' he said.
The site at issue includes the historic Endview Plantation home, outbuildings, a slave cemetery, the Harwood cemetery, fields and woods, according to an inventory by Citizens To Save Endview. The property was a military campsite during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and was used as a hospital during the Civil War.
The city has retained ownership of 24.7 acres, including the plantation home, for preservation, said John Quarstein, director of the War Memorial Museum, which helps oversee the city's historic properties.
Environmentally, the property is bisected by a spring-fed stream, Lebanon Run, and is bordered by a perennial stream, Curtis Run. The entire property drains south into the Lee Hall Reservoir, which provides drinking water to two-thirds of the lower Peninsula.
With development of a mall comes concrete paving, exhaust from cars and other urban debris, all of which opponents fear may wash off into the reservoir and taint water supplies. A runoff-control plan is being designed by Mall Properties, which the city still must approve.
Whether wetlands exist on Endview will be determined next week by the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates these environmentally important natural buffers, said Diana Bailey, a corps spokeswoman in Norfolk.
In its class-action lawsuit, opponents charge that the city and its Planning Commission failed to adequately address environmental, historical and traffic consequences from the proposed development.
Both the commission and the City Council approved zoning changes in June, despite objections from citizens, that allowed Mall Properties to go forward.
Protesters included a Pennsylvania lawyer and a Washington publicist, who would only identify themselves during a zoning hearing as representing ``citizens.''
The Planning Commission was so bothered by their anonymous testimony that vice chairman Fred Carter said he will introduce a new rule barring speakers who refuse to identify themselves.
The lawsuit challenging the zoning decision was filed in Newport News Circuit Court on July 11 on behalf of 14 residents and Civil War buffs. It specifically cites an alleged violation of the city's own Reservoir Protection Ordinance, a local law designed to safeguard drinking water supplies from encroaching development.
No trial date has been set. The city has 21 days to respond to the complaint.
``It's our view that paving 100 acres . . . will create runoff that will not benefit the people of Newport News,'' said Robert L. O'Donnell, a Norfolk attorney representing Citizens To Save Endview.
O'Donnell said he and colleague Patrick A. Ginsler, both from the Norfolk firm Van DeVenter, Black, Meredith & Martin, were brought into the case by Joel P. Aaronson, a Pittsburgh attorney.
Aaronson reportedly helped Crown American defeat the proposed mall in Altoona and, according to O'Donnell, is the lead attorney fighting the Endview development.
It remains unclear how Aaronson, based in Pittsburgh, became involved in the Newport News dispute. Efforts to contact him were unsuccessful; his office in Pittsburgh said he was in transit to Virginia.
As the owner of Patrick Henry Mall, Crown American is trapped in a tough situation. Leggett's, the primary department store anchor at Patrick Henry, will not approve expansion of the mall or allow other fashion department store anchors, unless it too benefits.
Leggett's doesn't want a competitor to have a larger store than it now occupies at Patrick Henry. But the company's future hangs in limbo since it was put up for sale earlier this year.
``Their (Crown American's) strategy is preservation. They're trying to protect the status quo rather than do something proactively,'' said a commercial real estate analyst who specializes in shopping centers.
The introduction of a new mall from Mall Properties, which already owns Coliseum Mall in Hampton, would effectively ``put the squeeze'' on Crown American, the analyst said.
It would be difficult to stave off declining sales if the proposed Endview Mall successfully attracts upscale shoppers from the northern Peninsula, including the Williamsburg area, and if Coliseum Mall can siphon off shoppers to the south, he and other sources said.
``Mall Properties wants to kill Crown American. Their strategy is self-preservation and capturing Newport News and Hampton. Crown American is just trying to survive,'' said one real estate expert.
Crown American, too, once thought about building a new mall on the northern Peninsula. It acquired an option on 125 acres in Lightfoot, near Williamsburg, in the late 1980s for the proposed Magnolia Mall.
But Christine Menna, a spokeswoman for Crown American, said the option on the land expired five years ago - a time when mall financing and new construction was in a recessionary lull.
Asked about Mall Properties' proposed Endview project and whether it would hurt business at Patrick Henry, Menna said: ``Any time there's additional competition, we want to position ourselves to be better and retain market share.''
Asked further if her company was bankrolling the opposition to the Endview Mall, she said, ``We're not commenting on that issue.'' ILLUSTRATION: Map
VP
KEYWORDS: SHOPPING MALLS SHOPPING CENTERS by CNB