Germanna Foundation

Preserving the historic heritage of the original settlers of the Fort Germanna Colonies in Virginia

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You are here: Home / Announcements / Germanna Foundation statement concerning Orange County Comprehensive Plan

Germanna Foundation statement concerning Orange County Comprehensive Plan

September 11, 2013 By Germanna Leave a Comment

Statement of the Germanna Foundation Opposing Amendments to Orange County Comprehensive Plan

The Germanna Foundation preserves what is best in the heritage of Orange County and works to transmit those values to the rising generations.

The staff-initiated proposed amendments to the Comprehensive Plan short-change the future, and so we must ask the Orange County Planning Commission to send this flawed plan back to the drawing board.

The Germanna Foundation supports economic growth and the cultivation of our cultural resources. Since 1956, the Germanna Foundation has preserved the largest portion of the first European settlement in what was once the western frontier of the British Empire.

Today, the Germanna Foundation is the center of a far-flung community, with members in the United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia.

It is that shared sense of heritage and responsibility to the community that led the Germanna Foundation to donate 100 acres of land to build the first campus of Germanna Community College here in Orange County, which has done more to benefit the residents of Orange County than any other institution.

We have sponsored our own Boy Scout troop and hosted many others who have hiked our forested land and canoed along the Rapidan River.

We also use our transatlantic connections to bring opportunity to people here in Orange County – on April 15, civic and business leaders (including Supervisors Frame and White) came to our headquarters to meet with representatives of a half-dozen German energy companies interested in investing in our home county.

While the Germanna Foundation has been far-sighted in bringing greater opportunity to people living in Orange County through higher education and jobs using the latest technology, we have also looked to safeguard the cultural landscape for the betterment of future generations of Orange County citizens.

The current Agricultural Zoning classification of the horseshoe-shaped peninsula of land along the Rapidan River in eastern Orange County aids in the protection of historic and scenic resources, which welcome both residents and visitors into Orange County from the west along Germanna Highway.

This modest protection would be swept away in the staff-proposed plan.

Good planning translates into good-paying jobs. The Counties of Albemarle, Clarke, Rappahannock and Fauquier have strong rural land use plans that protect against sprawl within their agricultural lands, while fostering agrarian-based economic development.

Orange County’s proposal to treat every parcel twenty acres or less as “residential” is the antithesis of these other sound planning practices demonstrated in the region.

Southern Fauquier’s conserved rural farmlands sustain more than twenty-five active family-run dairy farms and its northern rural areas foster good-paying equine industry jobs.

These conserved landscapes with their concurrent good-paying and locally-owned businesses and job opportunities stand in sharp contrast to the predominantly low-paying sprawl and strip-commercial-covered counties to the north and west.

Look closely at the types of jobs created in the sprawling commercial developments surrounding Fredericksburg and one can see Orange County’s bleak future under the staff’s proposed plan.

Notice, too, that increased service demands from sprawl are barely paid for by chain store tax receipts.

A comprehensive spreadsheet showing all the “real” costs must include column for the lost opportunities of long-term sustainable agricultural and tourism-related jobs that would be forever beyond Orange County’s reach if the staff plan is approved in its current form.

The Germanna Foundation strongly suggests the introduction of a new section in the plan for meaningful economic development which fosters Orange County locally-owned businesses and good-paying jobs.

This vision cannot be implemented with the new commercial and residential sprawl but instead by emulating Fauquier and Rappahannock’s strong agricultural plans and zones.

Further, in a spirit of sympathy with the County’s current residents’ concerns for the loss of their home’s value, the Germanna Foundation strongly opposes the new area designations for “Town Suburban Residential” and “village.”

These significant increases in suburban densities foster speculative residential development at a time when the county should be paying greater attention to the creation of good-paying jobs that simply don’t reallocate one retail job from a locally-owned business site to another retail job at a multinational corporation site.

Meaningful historic conservation that has both cultural and economic development value, however, is not achieved with token signage, parking lot drainage pits named after Civil War heroes, or by road and development names on projects that destroy tangible historic resources.

Instead, good planning succeeds in the conservation and management of historic properties in their intact historic settings.

Local heritage organizations, like the Germanna Foundation, comprised of local citizens and business representatives, attempt to meet the daunting challenge of conserving local historical resources that are reflected in Comprehensive Plans, and yet those very cultural resources are routinely destroyed by development and rezoning approvals.

If the staff-proposed Comprehensive Plan is approved, we will recommend to the Orange County Board of Supervisors to consider rescinding its Tourism Proclamation on the April 23, 2013 Agenda.

Almost 80% of all tourists are heritage tourists who visit authentic and intact historic destinations like Orange County.

Turning the Germanna peninsula into a zone for “Potential Economic Development” or “Town/Suburban Residential” would spoil the experience sought by tourists and the locally-based Orange County merchants who service them. (http://culturalheritagetourism.org/documents/2012CHTFactSheet_000.pdf )

It is senseless to transform these valuable and unique resources into another wasteland of dullness.

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. Good community planning is about both “process” and “outcome.”

The process should have intensive community involvement and input, and the outcome should benefit the greater good. Orange County’s staff-rushed grab-bag of proposed plan amendments are neither procedurally nor substantively fair to its citizens.

The amendments facilitate low-density residential sprawl and junky, low-paying strip commercial development across its presently scenic and rural agricultural corridors and areas.

The Germanna Foundation is a regional leader in heritage tourism.

It is the successful manager of historic Salubria in Culpeper County, it is seeking preservation of historic Germantown and the John Marshall Birthplace Farm in Fauquier County, and is working with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources and the University of Mary Washington on an archaeology plan funded by the Germanna Foundation to complete the excavation of Governor Spotswood’s Enchanted Castle and to locate the palisade walls and blockhouse of Fort Germanna here in Orange County.

The cultural landscape of the Germanna settlement is fragile; it cannot be rebuilt if lost.

If it is lost, citizenship suffers. We don’t preserve our 179-acre part of Orange County to raise trees; we preserve our forest to raise men and women of character.

The Germanna Foundation has much at stake in this peninsula of land and throughout the region.

The Germanna Foundation therefore requests that Planning Commission ask the staff to rethink their proposal in order to protect this historic gateway, in recognition of the decades of work by forward-looking local, state, and federal organizations concerned about the future of our culture, and out of respect to the future generations of Virginians and Americans.

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Filed Under: Announcements, Conservation

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Germanna Foundation’s Mission and Stewardship

The Germanna Foundation tells America’s story of liberty through the frontier experience of her settlers and descendants using archaeological, historical, and genealogical research and interpretation. We are stewards over these important properties:

  • Fort Germanna Visitor Center campus which includes a Museum, Genealogy Library, the Hitt Archaeology Center, and the Germanna Memorial Garden
  • Siegen Forest – 170-acre Hiking and Nature Trails along the Rapidan river
  • 1714/1717 Fort Germanna Archaeology Site
  • Virginia Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood’s home “Enchanted Castle” Archaeology Site
  • 1757 Georgian-style Salubria Manor
  • 1800 Peter Hitt Farm

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Germanna Foundation

The Germanna Foundation
MAILING: P.O. Box 279
LOCATION: 2062 Germanna Highway
Locust Grove, VA 22508-0279
Phone: 540-423-1700
Fax: 540-423-1747
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Fort Germanna Visitor Center, Museum & Library

2062 Germanna Highway (Route 3)
Locust Grove, VA 22508
(Next to the Germanna Community College campus)

Hours of Operation:
Monday-Friday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
CLOSED Saturday and Sunday

Advanced reservations are required to use the library. Research time limited to 2 hours.

Masks are required in the Visitor Center at all times. Please maintain 6 feet distance. Limit of 4 people in the library; 5 people in the museum.

Out of town visitors are urged to call us at 540-423-1700 to confirm or to make special arrangements for groups.

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Hike Siegen Forest!

Behind the Fort Germanna Visitor Center is our 170-acre Siegen Forest nature and hiking trails along the Rapidan river. Trails continue to be OPEN. When visiting the trails, please practice “Leave no Trace” ethos and maintain proper social distancing. If you enjoy the trails, consider donating to the Germanna Foundation to help support their upkeep.

 

About

The Germanna Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring the Colonial Virginia frontier via the historic 1714 Fort Germanna and its German colonists and their descendants.

It conducts archaeological exploration and conservation, genealogical research and publishing, and historic preservation and interpretation.

The Foundation owns and maintains several historic sites and properties, such as Salubria Manor, that were part of or closely connected to the Germanna colonies, the town of Germanna, and the other early colonial Virginia settlements and towns in the Piedmont area of Virginia.

Copyright © 2021 The Memorial Foundation of the Germanna Colonies in Virginia Inc. (The Germanna Foundation) | Website by CJKCREATIVE.COM

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