THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 30, 1994 TAG: 9412290179
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
LENGTH: Long : 378 lines
PRINCESS ANNE RECREATION CENTER: The flabby and weaker among us found yet another reason to consider a workout schedule when the $7.5 million Princess Anne Recreation Center opened its doors in March.
The sprawling, 84,000-square-foot complex is the third one built in the city and serves Redmill Farm, Dunwoody, Foxfire, Southgate, Hunt Club, Lake Placid and Pungo.
AMPHITHEATER: The city in April handed the nation's largest concert promotion company the job of building and operating a 15,000- to 20,000-seat amphitheater by 1995.
Cellar Door Entertainment, with offices in Virginia Beach, is the top choice of the city's Economic Development Department among four candidates for the task. The company already operates amphitheaters in Richmond, Raleigh, Charlotte, Detroit and Milwaukee.
CROATAN PARKING: Faced with the opposing demands of the residents of Croatan Beach and surfing enthusiasts, the City Council in May devised a compromise that seemed to please both. On-street parking at Croatan Beach is not prohibited, but surfers and other beachgoers are discouraged from doing so.
As incentive, the city now offers free, expanded parking at the Camp Pendleton National Guard Center.
ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD: For the first time, voters got a chance in May to elect School Board members after a tough and occasionally bitter contest. It appeared voters listened to what the Virginia Beach Education Association had to say because they overwhelmingly backed the association's candidates.
Six candidates were elected to the 11-member board. When the 1996 elections roll around, the voters will install another five members to round out the board so that all will then be elected.
The winners in 1994 were Elise M. Barnes, 39, a professor and chairwoman, Department of Political Science and Economics at Norfolk State University; Tim Jackson, 32, Virginia Beach Police sergeant; June T. Kernutt, 41, a housewife; Ulysses Van Spiva, 62, a retired Old Dominion University administrator; Charles W. Vincent, adult education specialist for the U.S. Army at Fort Story, 45; and James R. Darden, 59, retired Virginia Beach schools administrator.
Vincent, however, was indicted in October on charges that he violated a state ethics law. He is accused of illegally soliciting campaign contributions from architecture and construction firms seeking school building contracts. He would lose his seat if found guilty in January of the charges.
NEW CITY COUNCIL: Louisa Strayhorn defeated incumbent Robert Clyburn to earn a seat on the council along with newcomer William Harrison, who held back a challenge from former Councilman Al Balko.
Barbara Henley regained her seat on the 11-member panel, while council members Will Sessoms, Louis Jones and Nancy Parker were elected to serve four more years. Sessoms was later selected by the council to continue serving as vice mayor.
NEW HIGH SCHOOL: Ocean Lakes High opened its doors to students in September but not exactly with flying colors. Towering 100 feet above ground atop the city's newest high school is a $42,151 flagpole that, at the touch of an electronic switch or a signal from a sun-sensor, will automatically unfurl the American flag folded within its shaft.
The pricey patriotic pole became the rallying cry of city officials concerned about school spending.
VIRGINIA MARINE SCIENCE MUSEUM: Already one of the best-attended institutions of its kind in the state, the museum broke ground in September to triple in size.
A $30 million addition now under way will add 80,000 square feet of floor space and more than 400,000 gallons of aquarium space to the facility. Construction should be completed and the additions opened in stages during 1996.
AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL: Labor Day weekend turned out to be a big winner as tens of thousands packed the beaches to hear Billy Ray Cyrus, the Beach Boys and the Four Tops/Temptations.
Although the weather hampered the start, concert organizers dubbed the event a success and announced plans to repeat it in '95.
Police reported no major problems, although keeping traffic moving in and out of the area proved a monumental task.
REAPPORTIONMENT AND WARD SYSTEM: The City Council voted in October to transform itself from an at-large body to one elected by districts, following the will of the electorate.
The decision came almost a year after
the council failed to come to a consensus on reapportionment, triggering a petition drive by Council of Civic Organizations member Maury Jackson and a public vote in favor of change in May.
Three City Council members and the mayor would still be elected citywide under the plan, but seven council members would be elected only by residents in their ward. Those seven members currently are all elected at-large, even though each must live in the borough he or she represents.
The state legislature, which must approve any change in the city's charter, is expected to take up the proposal next year.
NEW TECHNICAL SCHOOL: City and school officials announced in November an 18-page plan for a new technical school in the northern part of the city, most likely to be built near Bayside High.
The gem of the technical center, as envisioned now, would be a Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences. Beach high school students also would be offered courses in computers, interactive multi-media communications and entrepreneurship. Graduates could be certified in their fields, which would help them land good jobs after high school or bolster applications for colleges or career-training schools.
LAKE RIDGE PROPERTY: The City Council decided this month to buy the 1,200-acre bankrupt development near City Hall at a cost of $9.5 million.
No plans have been developed for the property, but possible uses include an amphitheater, two or three schools, public park space and possibly a golf course.
Lake Ridge remains empty, despite a dozen years of dreams that included a minicity on the site. Several of the city's best-known figures, including developer R.G. Moore and former city councilwoman Nancy Creech, took heavy financial losses when the project failed.
CONGRESSMAN RE-ELECTED: Rep. Owen B. Pickett survived the national storm of anti-Democrat, anti-incumbent anger Nov. 8 turning back two-time Republican challenger Jim Chapman in the 2nd District congressional race.
Pickett, elected to Congress in 1986, earned a fifth term by winning 59 percent of the vote.
SAND FOR SANDBRIDGE: A decadelong crusade by residents of the oceanfront neighborhood ended in victory Nov. 1 when the City Council agreed to establish a special taxing district in Sandbridge to pay for replenishing sand along the waterfront for the next 50 years.
Sixty-five percent of the project will be funded by the state and federal government. The special taxing district will generate the other 35 percent. No other city money will be spent on the project.
CORPORATE LANDING'S FIRST TENANT: Al-Anon, the international self-help organization for families of alcoholics, announced this month that it will move its corporate headquarters to Virginia Beach.
The New York City-based organization is expected to build a 30,000-square-foot building at Corporate Landing office park and begin operations by the spring of 1996. Al-Anon would be the first tenant for the city's 400-acre park, which the Virginia Beach Development Authority purchased in 1988 and 1989. WHAT WAS OUT IN '94
AVAMERE HOTEL: The weathered Oceanfront inn, which offered old-fashioned hospitality and tasty Southern cooking for 59 years, was demolished in April. The aging resort queen had catered to a gradually disappearing clientele, said owner Clarence Smith.
The vacant lot served as a parking lot during the '94 tourist season. This fall, contruction began on a new Holiday Inn at the 26th Street site.
LAKE GASTON: The city's decadelong fight to build a pipeline and draw water from the lake straddling the North Carolina border seemed to be nearing an end until a major obstacle arose in June.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced it would undertake a yearlong study of the environmental impact of the pipeline.
A grim Virginia Beach City Council launched a new attack against the federal government in the succeeding months.
Council members unsuccessfully tried pressuring the agency that controls the pipeline's fate to reconsider its demand for an environmental study.
The council also decided to file suit against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, hoping to eliminate the commission's control over the pipeline. The agency, which oversees non-government hydroelectric projects, has jurisdiction because Lake Gaston was created by a Virginia Power hydroelectric dam.
The courts ruled, however, that the study could proceed.
Meanwhile, residents remain under restrictions on outdoor use of city water, and a moratorium remains in effect on any hookups for new construction.
NIGHTTIME PARKING IN RESORT: A ban on parking in resort residential neighborhoods was expanded in July by the City Council. The move means that people who live outside the Beach Borough can park only during the daytime in a section bounded by Laskin Road on the north, Norfolk Avenue on the south, Parks Avenue on the west and Pacific Avenue on the east.
Cars that don't bear residential decals will be banned from the streets from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily. Area residents may obtain a free parking permit for themselves and a free one for a guest. As a concession to beach day-trippers from other areas of Virginia Beach, the council also voted 8-3 to give them a fat discount on night rates at three municipal parking lots in the resort district.
SCHOOLS FINANCIAL OFFICER: After less than a year on the job, Hal W. Canary, chief financial officer for the city's school system, was placed on leave in August. Superintendent Sidney L. Faucette refused to offer any details about the move.
A certified public accountant, Canary was president of his own financial consulting firm in Memphis and came highly recommended when Virginia Beach schools hired him last September.
SEA ESCAPE HOTEL: Businessman Richard Maddox, whose family has owned the aging Sea Escape hotel at 17th Street and Atlantic Avenue since 1964, announced plans in September to raze the shocking pink structure, along with the two nearby public toilets, and turn 250 feet of road frontage into another public park.
Maddox wants the city to grant him permission to erect a 3,000-square-foot Dairy Queen, a franchise eatery that specializes in ice cream products, on the southwest corner of his property.
THE DOME: The Virginia Beach Civic Center, known to most as the ``Dome,'' stood as an Oceanfront icon and architectural treasure for more than 35 years in the resort area. But in September it was leveled by a wrecking crew in less than an hour.
The Dome occupied a unique position in the city's collective memory and played host to some of the most popular musical acts in American history, from Louis Armstrong to the Rolling Stones.
OCEANA SQUADRON: Attack Squadron 42 became an official victim of the military's downsizing efforts in September, when the last of the A-6 Intruders departed the master jet base.
The squadron's members were all reassigned and the hangar left empty. The Intruder has accounted for half of Oceana's inventory for the past 30 years, with as many as 150 of them at the base in the mid-1980s. Now just 36 remain, in three squadrons.
The last A-6 flies out in mid-1997 under current plans.
While the A-6 is on its way out, local Navy officials hope to gain the Navy's fleet of carrier-based F/A-18 Hornets, with its 200 aircraft and 4,000 personnel.
That would help alleviate growing fears that Oceana may not survive the threat of closure next year.
HALIFAX HOTEL: Like its neighbor the Avamere, which came down in April, this ``gray lady'' of the Oceanfront gave up the ghost in October after its 44th resort season.
Its classic rocking chairs that once lined the screened-in porch and all the furnishings were auctioned off a week before the final blow.
Owners Powell and Joan Joyner gave up the aging hotel to make way for a new Holiday Inn.
PRINCESS ANNE DOWNS: Churchill Downs' plans to build the state's first and only thoroughbred racetrack in Virginia Beach lost out to a rival's bid in New Kent County.
The Beach track, named Princess Anne Downs, was to be built on the Taylor farm off Dam Neck Road near London Bridge Road. City and Churchill Downs officials had labored for two years to secure the license, but the state racing commission faulted the application for several reasons, including potential traffic problems, unspecified funding and being farther removed from the state's traditional horse breeders.
ACCESS TO FALSE CAPE: Beginning Nov. 1, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge closed most of its impoundments and dikes to visitors through May 31, cutting off the main access to False Cape State Park.
The move, aimed at protecting wintering waterfowl, sparked a fierce battle that's still being waged between state and federal officials over the move.
Some False Cape supporters charge that the Back Bay refuge has an ulterior motive of shutting down the state park so the federal government can claim the land, while some Back Bay proponents accuse the state of trying to foil the refuge's expansion efforts, in an effort to force the refuge to abandon its seasonal closure.
The only current access to the state park is a 4-mile hike along the beach.
EXPRESSWAY TOLLS: The Commonwealth Transportation Board voted in November to banish all tolls from the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway, effective next Oct. 1.
The more than 100,000 commuters who stop at the expressway's 25-cent toll plaza and 10-cent interchanges every day will save both time and money, but city officials fought the move, saying the revenue was needed to guarantee that needed improvements would still be made.
Gov. George Allen had pushed for removal of the fees.
OCEANFRONT ENTERTAINMENT CONTRACT: The City Council decided earlier this month to drop its longtime contractor for popular summertime events and instead go with Cellar Door Productions, the country's largest promoter of live events.
Four council members voted to keep the contract with Virginia Beach Events Unlimited, whose leaders have been involved in beachfront events for 21 years.
After four hours of intense debate, though, seven members voted to go with Cellar Door, which will take over management of programs such as the American Music Festival, the North American Fireworks Competition and the July 4th fireworks, and promises to add more than a dozen new events, mostly at the Oceanfront. [sidebar to cover story] CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Despite earning the distinction over the past few years as the safest city of its size in the nation, Virginia Beach has hardly been untouched by crime and violence. Some of the tragedies recorded in 1994 include:
Mercedes Russell and Kenneth Long were charged in January with felony child abuse and abduction after child-welfare workers were tipped off that the unmarried couple were punishing Russell's 4-year-old daughter by stuffing her into a tiny linen closet that was modified into a cramped, cagelike enclosure.
Russell, 24, was found guilty of the charges in June. Long, 27, was convicted in October. He was sentenced Nov. 28 to seven years in prison with four years suspended.
Michael S. Mitchell, 21, was arrested and charged April 29 with the slaying of a 44-year-old shopper at a Kempsville Food Lion checkout counter.
An argument between Mitchell and George Fedon Jr. apparently started as an offhand joke between strangers.
Fedon was angry because Mitchell's beer was mistakenly rung up on his bill, witnesses said in court. Fedon got Mitchell into a headlock, then Mitchell pulled a gun out of his pants, pressed it against Fedon's body and fired.
Mitchell was found guilty Nov. 15 of second-degree murder.
John R. Langowski, a suspended Norfolk police officer, was charged with the April 1 shooting of a security guard inside a crowded Kmart at Chimney Hill Shopping Center.
Langowski shot the guard after he discovered Langowski leaving the store with a microwave oven he had not paid for. Langowski, 31, turned himself in Easter Sunday and was later connected with several other crimes. In all, Langowski faces 21 felony charges in five jurisdictions.
Marvin Owens, 16, was arrested July 23 and charged with killing his grandmother, half-brother and two cousins, who lived on Seaboard Road.
Police said the killings resulted from a drug-related robbery.
Owens will stand trial as an adult. He faces two counts of capital murder, three counts of first-degree murder, four firearms charges and one count of robbery.
Michael D. Clagett, 33, and his girlfriend, Denise Holsinger, were arrested in connection with the June 30 quadruple homicide at the Witchduck Inn.
The victims were identified as bar owner LamVan Son, 41; tavern handyman Wendel G. ``J.R.'' Parrish Jr., 32; bartender Karen S. Rounds, 31; and patron Abdelaziz Gren, 34.
Claggett faces capital murder charges; Holsinger, a former bartender at the inn, faces first-degree murder charges.
Moises Roman, 18, invaded a home near Stumpy Lake Sept. 13 and took an 11-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy hostage at gunpoint while demanding money from their mother. He surrendered to police nine hours later.
Roman was charged with 10 felonies, including abduction, rape and extortion. An unemployed high-school dropout, he had pleaded guilty two months earlier to other burglaries.
Curtis Brandon, a 16-year-old gunman dubbed ``the most dangerous man in Virginia Beach'' by a prosecutor, was sentenced Oct. 17 to 53 years in prison for shooting a pizza deliveryman in the heart because he took too long to hand over his wallet during an Oct. 30, 1993, robbery at Regency Apartments.
The sentence was nearly 12 years more than the maximum recommended in the guidelines. After Brandon shot the deliveryman, he and two friends picked up the pepperoni pizza James Murray was delivering, took it to a nearby apartment and ate it while they watched rescue workers struggle to save Murray's life. Murray's heart stopped during surgery, but physicians were able to restart it. [Side bar to cover story] IN PASSING [photos] Capt. Clyde Hathaway, the commanding officer of the Virginia Beach Police Department's Fourth Precinct, died Aug. 18 from the effects of a brain tumor.
Among the city's most creative officers, Hathaway helped shape many innovative community police programs that were credited with cutting certain crimes while raising community awareness about the need for people to get involved.
Hathaway, 64, who led the resort area's Second Precinct during the tumultuous riots of 1989, founded Crime Solvers, coached Little League and was the father of six children.
Stenzhorn
Ramona Stenzhorn, principal at Salem High School and one of the most senior principals in the city school system, died Nov. 25 of a heart attack while on a Thanksgiving vacation in Northern Virginia. She was 52.
Stenzhorn had previously served as principal at Shelton Park Elementary School, Linkhorn Park Elementary School, Rosemont Elementary School and Virginia Beach Junior High School. She was in her third year at Salem.
She also was on the staff of the Hampton Center of George Washington University, where she taught aspiring public school administrators.
Chris Worrell, one of two entrepreneurial brothers who helped shape the Oceanfront into a tourist mecca, died Dec. 20 after a yearlong bout with cancer.
Worrell, 50, earned a reputation as an astute, hard-nosed businessman who made, lost and remade substantial sums on resort investments ranging from restaurants to motel and retail development.
The signature piece of his various enterprises became Worrell Brothers Restaurant and Raw Bar, an Atlantic Avenue eatery and nightspot, which his brother Michael opened in the late 1960s and which he took over in 1979.
In 1975 Worrell Brothers became the first bar at the beach to get a mixed beverage license, and it quickly became the most popular watering hole at the Oceanfront.
Bill Wilson, vice president for academic affairs and dean of Virginia Wesleyan College, died Dec. 25 in a traffic accident shortly after leaving a Christmas church service.
Wilson, 64, came to Wesleyan in 1971 from Wofford College in South Carolina, where he had been a professor of religion. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
WHAT WAS IN: Billy Ray Cyrus headlined star-studded entertainment
for fans at the American Music Festival at the Oceanfront in
September.[cover photo]
Photo by DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
WHAT WAS OUT: Thomas H. Meeker, president of Churchill Downs, was
left disappointed when his group's bid to build Princess Anne Downs
was rejected.[cover photo]
WHAT WAS IN: Vice Mayor William Sessoms, left, congratulates William
Harrison on his first-term election to the Lynnhaven Borough of city
council.[cover photo]
File photo
Rep. Owen B. Pickett earns a fifth term to Congress by surviving the
anti-Democrat, anti-incumbent tide.
Staff photo by DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
The Dome ended a 35-year reign as one of the city's premier
landmarks when it met the wrecking crane in September.
KEYWORDS: YEAR IN REVIEW by CNB