A thaw, and Valley Forge battle lines redrawn

It's been a nasty, hateful and, at times, personal fight, one that seemed destined to go on forever. But last week, momentum swung sharply toward those striving to build a controversial museum on private land inside Valley Forge National Historical Park.

Key tactical concessions and legal victories, building upon favorable government votes, have moved the American Revolution Center closer to being constructed at the Lower Providence site where its supporters want it to go.

"When you get a court order in your favor, the momentum shifts," said Paul Decker, head of the Valley Forge Convention and Visitors Bureau and a studied observer of the drama.

ARC executives won a big court decision on Tuesday when a federal judge threw out a case that opponents had expected to tie up the project for years. That came the day after ARC made a major concession, announcing a voluntary 15-year moratorium on construction of a significant part of the development, the conference center.

ARC leaders painted the conference center as a "scholars' dormitory," while foes saw it as a commercialized 99-room hotel.

"My main problem to date has been that damn hotel. They took it off the table, and they deserve credit for that," said Albert Paschall, chief executive officer of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. "It's time to back the Lower Providence site."

He was drafting a letter to the National Parks Conservation Association, an independent advocate that has fought the project, saying the moment for compromise and settlement was at hand.

The nonprofit American Revolution Center earlier received township approval to build a three-story museum, a four-story conference center, and a trailhead structure containing maps and bathrooms on 78 acres it owns within the boundary of the park.

ARC executives describe the complex as a proud addition to Valley Forge, telling the story of the American Revolution at the site of the Continental Army's 1777-78 winter encampment. But opponents including the NPCA, National Park Service officials, and local residents say the project would hurt wetlands, wildlife, and historic ground. They have supported a museum - but on the south side of the Schuylkill, near the park Visitor Center.

However, in an interview Friday, an NPCA official said the agency's stance had shifted.

"I'm not saying it has to move back to the visitors center. We've said that in the past. We're not saying that any more," said Joy Oakes, the NPCA Mid-Atlantic senior director. "We're saying it has to be on an appropriate site, and not prejudging where that is. . . . We would consider every option, around a table where everybody is considering every option."

ARC executives have said they'll discuss modifications to any aspect of the project except its location.

Oakes reiterated that the 78-acre woodland site was sacred American ground, and the wrong place for ARC to build. "They're in danger of teaching, as their first lesson, that the land where history happened is not important."

She said it was crucial to look beyond "the public relations" of ARC's self-imposed moratorium, a gesture that could be rescinded as easily as it was announced. If ARC is serious about eliminating the conference center, it should seek a change in zoning that would permanently ban construction, she said.

When first proposed a decade ago, the museum was to stand near the park's welcome center as part of a public-private partnership. But in 2007, the marriage between the park service and the ARC fell apart amid disputes over fund-raising, management, and control, and ARC moved ahead on its own.

ARC won votes before the Lower Providence Board of Supervisors and last year before the township zoning board. The months-long zoning hearing was notable for its hostility, replete with threats and accusations. After the hearing ended in October, the NPCA joined five homeowners in filing federal and local lawsuits.

Then things began to speed up.

In November, Wayne-based ARC fired its hard-charging CEO, Tom Daly, and replaced him with Bruce Cole, then head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and a self-described "peacemaker." On Monday, Cole announced the conference-center moratorium. On Tuesday, the judge dismissed the federal lawsuit - cutting off what was expected to be a protracted legal battle.

For the NPCA and its allies, that suit was the hammer that would force ARC to reconsider the site of the museum complex. Once the case was in court, advocates said, it could take a year to go to trial, and years more for appeals to play out - damaging ARC's ability to raise money and sustain interest.

Eventually, the scenario went, ARC's sponsors would agree to move the museum to a site near the Visitor Center or even withdraw completely and build in another city, perhaps Yorktown, Va.

But Judge Anita Brody ruled that zoning-and-land decisions traditionally fall to the states, booting the case off the federal docket and sending it to Montgomery County Court. The NPCA, which earlier withdrew its local lawsuit to pursue the federal litigation, has not decided its next step.

"I think we have a good momentum moving forward now," ARC president Cole said in an interview. "At the same time, I want to reach out to everyone who has an interest in the American Revolution Center and extend the hand of friendship."

Cole said the conference-center moratorium would dramatically cut the cost of the project, to $180 million or less. The estimated price of the original three-piece development had been pegged at $375 million, which included a $50 million endowment.

Deirdre Gibson, chief of planning and resource management at Valley Forge Park, said she believed ARC's court victory represented "a tiny step in a long, long dance. I would hardly call it momentum."

"The project hasn't changed," she said. "A moratorium is like a New Year's resolution."

ARC has scheduled a groundbreaking ceremony for May. Some who have followed the project's years of twists and turns now sense the possibility of settlement.

"The new CEO, Bruce Cole, is clearly out rebuilding bridges," said Decker, of the Valley Forge convention bureau. "I'm far more hopeful of a resolution."