Executives with the American Revolution Center have abandoned their controversial plan to build the museum inside the boundary of Valley Forge national park and will move the entire project to Center City.
The museum, known as ARC, and which now exists only on paper, will be relocated to 3rd and Chestnut Streets, to a property that once was a National Park Service visitors center. Currently the building houses classrooms and viewing stations where people can watch archeologists at work.
"We're off to a fresh, promising, exciting start," ARC President Bruce Cole said today.
He said it's uncertain whether the museum will be built inside the existing building, the Independence Living History Center, or whether that structure will be demolished and replaced with a new one.
The battle over ARC has gone on for years - longer than the Revolution itself. The nonprofit ARC had earlier received permission from Lower Providence Township officials to build a three-story museum, a four-story conference center, and a trailhead structure containing maps and bathrooms on 78 acres of private land within the boundary of the national park.
But legal challenges from the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, promised to tie up the development for at least another year - strangling ARC's ability to raise money.
"Very, very disheartening," was how Township Manager Joseph Dunbar described ARC's departure. He estimated the township would miss out on up to $1 million a year in tax revenue associated - not to mention the countless hours of staff time invested in the project during the last several years.
ARC executives described 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 Conservation Association, National Park Service officials and local residents said the project would hurt wetlands, wildlife and historic ground.
They supported a museum - but on the south side of the Schuylkill, near the Valley Forge park Visitor Center.
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