OK will let Revolution site advance

On the morning after, silence.

As quiet as the morning itself, across the plateau where Gen. George Washington camped his army in the winter of 1777-78.

The latest battle about Valley Forge National Historical Park was over.

The Lower Providence Township supervisors, at a Thursday evening zoning hearing, rejected an offer by the National Park Service to partner with a nonprofit agency to preserve a piece of the park as open space.

Instead, by a 3-2 vote, the supervisors approved an ordinance that will allow the American Revolution Center (ARC) to build, on privately owned parkland, a museum, a conference center and 99-room hotel to attract an estimated 725,000 visitors a year.

The Revolution Center has said that it intends to join with the township and the county to buy 125 acres along Pawlings Road from the Philadelphia Roman Catholic Archdiocese for $7.1 million.

The township and the county would each get a piece, the Revolution Center 78 acres.

At the end of Thursday's hearing, Thomas M. Daly, president and chief executive officer of ARC, said in an interview: "We're pleased that after seven months of negotiating, through 13 [draft] ordinances, that we're about to move forward with this proposal."

In interviews yesterday, there was no indication that any individual or group would challenge that ruling, the next step in any appeal process, in Montgomery County Court in the next 30 days.

Valley Forge Park superintendent Mike Caldwell had told the supervisors' hearing that the Trust for Public Land "stands ready to work with the National Park Service to acquire and save this land."

"If we're given the opportunity, all the land would be preserved."

Yesterday, Alan Front, senior vice president for the San Francisco headquarters of the trust, had a more guarded explanation.

"The sum total of our involvement has been . . . an offer to the Park Service to engage in conservation discussions for the property, if the museum proposal was no longer the operative proposal."

Front said in an interview, "We have indicated to the Park Service that we would be happy to enter into those sorts of discussions, if they were useful and if the opportunity arose.

"Our understanding has been that there are advanced discussions between the archdiocese and the folks who proposed the museum complex. And so we haven't seen that opportunity."

Just before he voted for the ordinance, Supervisors Chairman Craig Dininny chastised the Park Service and its parent, the Department of the Interior, for not offering sooner to preserve the land.

"Shame on them," Dininny told his audience, "for letting this decision get to this board.

"Why didn't you protest it?" he asked Caldwell. "Why do I have to be at odds with my neighbors?"

Yesterday, Caldwell said his agency "was comfortable with the ARC" until "we saw the [latest draft] ordinance and its ramifications."

On Thursday evening, near the close of the 41/2-hour hearing, the two dissenting supervisors said they were shocked that this week, ARC officials refused to sign an agreement limiting future development.

"I have been asking the ARC folks for over eight months now as to what their plans are for this property in total," Supervisor Richard T. Brown told the hearing. "I have yet to get a straight answer."

Supervisor Chris DiPaolo said, "I feel I've been taken advantage of."

Yesterday, Dan Naimoli, head of Friends of Valley Forge Park, said he was not shocked at all.

"I'm absolutely concerned" about ARC's future development, Naimoli said, "but not surprised.

"Recognizing that museums are notorious money-losers, I didn't see how that would be a viable operation without extended commercialization" in the future.

"We're opposed to that," he said, referring to his 400-member group.