Open house

Another year has passed, or just about, and Town of Warrenton property at 173 Main St., remains locked and forlorn.

Another year has passed, and Brentmoor, the onetime home of Fauquier County Judge Edward M. Spilman, of Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals President James Keith, and, briefly, of a former U.S. consul to Hong Kong, remains shuttered.

U.S. Consul John Singleton Mosby is better known hereabouts for his Civil War exploits, but, even so, the town’s purchase of a home he owned for a mere two years long after the days of derring-do were behind him has always left us baffled.

There has been talk, of course, in the ... what is it now, 13 years? ... that the town has owned Brentmoor, that tourists will flock to the historic structure if it can ever be opened as the museum that town fathers envisioned when they unwisely and contentiously bought the property in 1999.

We’ve never been entirely convinced that 25,000 people a year would trek to Warrenton to visit the home of a small-town lawyer, but others, apparently, do.

Anyway, through a convoluted series of agreements that would confuse Rube Goldberg, town council has come up with an arrangement that might, could, possibly, lead to Brentmoor being opened within our lifetimes.

Basically, Warrenton will lease the property to the Partnership for Warrenton Foundation, which will in turn sublease the property to Gray Ghost LLC, which is a concoction that consists of the Partnership plus an unidentified investor in historic tax credits, which will, in turn, sublease the property to...the Town of Warrenton.

All this, we are given to understand, is an end run around rules which forbid municipalities from cashing historic tax credits.

Which begs the question: Do we really want our elected town government spending this much time and effort — indeed, do we want it spending any time and effort — uncovering ways to get state resources to which, clearly, we are not entitled?