Former Va. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder’s slavery museum project stalled in Fredericksburg - The Washington Post: A decade ago, a real estate company donated 38 acres of prime land near Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg to a nonprofit group designing a slavery museum. The Silver Cos. built hotels and a conference center on land nearby and worked to attract other tourism businesses, banking on the powerful draw of a national museum envisioned by former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder.
All that’s on the land now is a small garden, long since overgrown with weeds.
The museum was never built. An attorney acting for the museum filed for bankruptcy last September, after the city stepped in to seize the land for unpaid taxes. In August, she asked that the bankruptcy case be dismissed.
The full payment of the debt to the city “can be achieved in days,” Sandra Robinson wrote in court documents, and the museum project would begin fundraising again. The judge granted the request to dismiss the case.
A month later, Fredericksburg Treasurer Jim Haney has not heard from anyone associated with the museum or received any money toward the more than $300,000 owed to the city.
