Since an announcement in January that Lexington is being considered as the new location for the Museum of the Confederacy, now in Richmond, there have been questions in the small city over whether the museum's arrival would be positive or profitable for the community.

Landlocked by Virginia Commonwealth University's medical campus and in need of larger quarters, the museum is looking for a new home in time for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in 2011.

Lexington is among about 10 localities that plan to submit proposals to the museum by April 15 in an effort to attract the facility and the tourism dollars that come with it. Museum officials won't say where the other sites are, but revealed about half of the localities are near Civil War battlefield sites.

Waite Rawls, the museum's director, said there's much that the museum and Lexington have to offer each other.

"It is a tremendous opportunity to Lexington," Rawls said. "We are the most important Civil War collection that exists in the world."

The museum's educational and research programs could match up well with Virginia Military Institute and nearby Washington and Lee University. Lexington also has the Lee Chapel and Museum, where Robert E. Lee is buried, as well as the Stonewall Jackson House, where Jackson lived while he was a professor at VMI before the war. Jackson is also buried in Lexington.

The Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors and Lexington City Council are considering a proposal to locate the museum in the old Rockbridge County Courthouse complex on Main Street.

Rawls said the museum drew 50,000 visitors last year and generated close to a half-million in sales tax revenue.

"The numbers show history tourists shop till they drop," Rawls said.

Lexington, in turn, has a pedestrian-friendly downtown and will have plenty of parking when the new Rockbridge County Courthouse and its parking garage are completed in two years.

"This is, at its heart, an economic development opportunity," said Brian Shaw, chairman of the Rockbridge Area Tourism Board and executive vice president of the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington.

Rawls said the museum's primary appeal is to retired baby boomers, the same target audience that is already attracted to the Lexington area.

"The demographic profile of their visitor fits the demographic profile of the Lexington visitor," said Shaw, who said the additional tourist traffic from the museum could bring a million dollars annually in total tax revenue to the area.

At least one Lexington official isn't convinced the museum would be a success there.

"I'm not sure it's going to be as income-producing for our citizens as people think it is," said Lexington City Council member Mimi Elrod, who voted against the city submitting a proposal to attract the museum. "I have real questions about the numbers."

Elrod is among those who view the museum's focus on the Confederacy, which fought to preserve slavery, to be as divisive now as it was during the Civil War.

"My concern with the Museum of the Confederacy is it is celebrating a cause that was established to maintain the enslavement of people," she said. "I don't want to celebrate the Confederacy."

Elrod said the museum would be more acceptable if it were a Civil War museum that represented both sides of the war.

She had hoped that the museum's mission would be broader when Rawls said recently that museum officials were considering changing the museum's name to remove the word Confederacy.

Rawls said people have misinterpreted his statements.

"We've tried our best to tell people ... that speculation about a name change is exactly that. We're not considering a name change until we can determine where our future location is," he said, adding, "There's no fundamental change in the mission being contemplated at all."

Rawls said controversial topics such as slavery should be explored from an educational standpoint in order to truly understand them.

"It's therefore vital that our educational mission be emphasized," he said. "I think we do a very good job of making people understand better the causes of the war, the aftermath of the war, how it was conducted, who fought it, what they believed in at the time."

Elrod also objects to the museum's intent to fly the Confederate flag over its building if it were to relocate in downtown Lexington.

"If you're flying the Confederate flag, you're celebrating the Confederacy, and I don't think we need to do that in Lexington," she said.

Shaw said any Confederate flag that would be flown wouldn't be the battle flag that's most associated with the Confederacy, but rather a Confederate state flag.

"That's an important distinction," he said. "I would not want to see a Confederate battle flag out on Main Street. That's not what it's going to be."

Ted DeLaney, a history professor at Washington and Lee University and a Lexington native who is black, said such a prominent display of the Confederacy at the museum would create division in the community.

"Even during the days when Lexington was a segregated community ... Lexington was a civil place," he said. "I don't see anything that is positive in the museum relocating to a community like this. The tenor of the debate so far indicates to me that there is great potential for a lack of civility."

A poll taken by a Lexington-area newspaper showed 80 percent of respondents in favor of the museum, and Elrod said she has received about 90 negative e-mails attacking her stance since she first began speaking out against the museum.

DeLaney, too, said he was criticized for his comments against the museum at a tourism board meeting last week.

At Washington and Lee, where just more than 4 percent of the student population is black, it's unclear if the school's minority recruiting efforts would be hampered by the museum.

"I think it is fair to say that the Museum of the Confederacy would not be a net plus for the recruitment of African-American students to Washington and Lee," W&L President Ken Ruscio said in an e-mail. "Whether it would actually be a detriment depends on several factors, including the identity, mission and even the very name it ultimately adopts if it moves to Lexington."

Ruscio said the school honors Lee the educator, not the soldier.

Ultimately, the discussion in Lexington may be much ado about nothing.

Rawls said the museum's board of directors would like for it to remain in Richmond, which was the capital of the Confederacy during the war.

"Our feeling all along is that we have a preference for Richmond," he said. "We've been here for 117 years and we kind of like it."

But proposals from localities such as Lexington that present an appealing financial incentive package will be seriously considered, Rawls said.