If You’ve Seen One Battlefield . . .

Sometimes it seems that life is just one shopping mall after another. Take, for instance, the 1.2-million-square-foot William Center Mall that is to be built in Prince William County about 20 miles west of the White House and the Washington Monument. But then the mall is only part of it. Ultimately the 600-acre development will include 1.7 million square feet of office space and 560 new homes.

The mall, the brainchild of Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., the nation’s biggest builder of shopping malls, will have some competition. Within a 25-mile radius of William Center Mall, according to the Washington Post, there already are three shopping centers. A fourth is under construction. A fifth is planned. The nearest major competitor is the 1.4-million-square-foot, 213-store Fair Oaks Mall.

But there will be something special about the William Center Mall, for on two sides it will be built smack up against Manassas National Battlefield Park, the site of the first and second battles of Bull Run in the Civil War. Manassas is appropriately described by Post columnist Jonathan Yardley as “one of the few pieces of land in America to which the world hallowed applies without reservation.” There in 1861 was fought the first major battle of the war. And there in 1862 was fought a second critical battle that wiped out all the gains of the Union Army in Northern Virginia the previous year. Each time the Union feared for the life of the nation’s capital.

National Park Service officials have expressed concern about encroaching development in and around national landmarks of the capital region, especially Manassas. Now their worst fears have been realized. The Park Service has no legal authority to stop the mall--it should have, but doesn’t. Local historic-preservation groups vowed to fight the mall, but the deck is stacked against them. The county rezoned the property in 1986 shortly after the real-estate firm working with DeBartolo bought it.

Local officials in fact are delighted as they struggle with neighboring Fairfax County for the region’s booming commercial and residential business. “It excites me in the sense that we’re no longer going to stand in the shadow of Fairfax County,” County Supervisor Robert L. Cole said. “This is going to be nicer than Fair Oaks.”

And think of it: a mall with its own national historic shrine.