GDG- more living in gettysburg

[Michael Brubaker]

Andy,

   In response to your question, we did research the area.  We visited the schools our children would go to, we spent a week at a hotel in town and toured the area, etc. etc.  However, it has been well known that due to the influx of people to the area, that development and retail shopping is on the slate for construction, especially out York Road.  So, we moved in the area with the knowledge or assumption that these types of stores would be built in a few years.  
    And now, like we were told, there are several shopping centers, etc. in the approval process for the outskirts of town.  The Target center is slated to go in the empty scrub-filled lot between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Staples.  Currently, there is nothing in that space but trash and weeds.  However, I've been told that preservation groups are planning to protest the building of that center because it was Camp Letterman after the battle.  My issue is with holding up progress in the name of preservation, when there is nothing preservable on the current property other than weeds.  I'm all for preserving the battlefield and the current park lands.  I'm even all for preserving areas with historic buildings like Hunterstown that aren't currently under NPS control.  However, in the case of York Road, where all that is there currently is nothing, and a soldier happened to step across that land 150 years ago, to hold up that development seems absurd to
 me.  
    In my mind, the fact that so many of the privately owned Civil War Era homes in town are in bad need of repair and upkeep seems to be a greater crime to me, but no one discusses that.  Just my two cents.  

Thanks,
Mike



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