Word: parkes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Center, a 300,000-square-foot museum and conference center, which will include restaurants and up to 99 hotel rooms. What makes it so controversial is that this particular development is set to be built on a privately owned 78-acre parcel nestled inside the Valley Forge National Historical Park, famed as the site where the fragile Continental Army set up camp and survived the dark winter of 1777-78. Cluley is adamant about her cause. Without the soldiers who used this property during the Revolution, she says, "There would be no United States... They're going to pave over...
However, vigorous opposition from preservationists and some local residents greeted the local planning commission's preliminary approval of the project in May. The focus of their ire is the plan to develop a parcel of property in the park known as the Pawlings Farm. Some historians believe it was the location of a major supply depot used to collect cattle and other food coming to the beleaguered American army from farms up north. Critics and preservationists say the expansive development will permanently alter historically important land and set a dangerous precedent for other National Parks, many of which have similar...
...People see a national park and say 'Oh, this is protected.' Well, not completely," says Joy Oakes, senior Mid-Atlantic regional director for The National Parks Conservation Association, "because within those boundaries are holes... and all it takes is one bad development, or one perfectly good development in the wrong place, to have an enormous impact...
This patchwork of public and private land can lead to development within the parks themselves. In 2004, only a last-minute offer of $8.5 million from the federal government stopped a developer from building a 62-acre luxury subdivision in another part of the Valley Forge park. In 2005, the National Park Service was unable to buy a 20-acre site inside Zion National Park and the owners have subsequently turned it into a private spiritual retreat center. And Gettysburg, not too far from Valley Forge, remains among the nation's most threatened historical sites. With roughly...
There was little contentiousness in the beginning. The $100 million project began with nearly universal support from historians, lawmakers, and area residents more than a decade ago. Congress authorized the Revolution Center to build its facility adjacent to the current National Park Service Visitors Center at Valley Forge. But relations soured between the National Park Service and the Revolution Center, which said the Park Service was limiting the scale of the museum and demanding too much control. In 2006, center officials broke off negotiations with the Park Service and found the privately owned Pawling Farm site inside the park...