THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 28, 1995 TAG: 9507270161
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 162 lines
A DIVERSE MIX of quality retail businesses aimed at big-spending tourists is the key to recharging the Oceanfront economy.
That's how semi-retired developer Thomas C. Kyrus sees it.
He envisions rows of chic boutiques, antique stores, fancy art-frame shops, Asian or European restaurants with umbrella-shaded outdoor tables and exclusive china and jewelry shops lining tree-shaded streets leading to the resort.
It would be an airy, tastefully assembled ``open-air'' shopping promenade, using existing residential and commercial buildings to give the area an artsy flavor.
It would attract high-income visitors to the Oceanfront year-round, says Kyrus, who recently stepped down from the Resort Area Advisory Commission, a citizens panel charged with overseeing resort activities and redevelopment.
He views the plan as a boon to the long-term economic health of the resort district.
``It makes sense,'' he says adamantly. ``It can be done.''
How?
By having private capital and the city's legal muscle join forces to turn largely deteriorating ``gateway'' routes to the Oceanfront - such as 19th, 21st, 31st and 17th streets - into tasteful, landscaped ``open air'' malls, he said.
Kyrus has been preaching this sermon for the past three years, seemingly to little avail, while other matters - such as the $100 million resort hurricane protection plan, the $17 million amphitheater and a half-dozen golf course proposals - have occupied official attention.
``The idea,'' he declares, ``is to bring what is not on Atlantic Avenue. It would bring in different people, different merchandise. It would create jobs and bring in new tax revenues. Right now these people are not coming to Virginia Beach.''
A pie-in-the-sky dreamer, Kyrus is not. He's a hard-nosed businessman who has been in the commercial real estate development business in South Hampton Roads for nearly 50 years.
He has put together his share of successful deals. One of them familiar to locals is the Princess Anne Plaza Shopping Center, which he helped assemble with the late John Aragona. Just about every 7-Eleven store or McDonald's restaurant in town today was put there with the help of Kyrus.
Kings Grant and Windsor Woods were developed with his help, and he worked with developer R.G. Moore, who cut a wide swath through the residential building industry in Virginia Beach in the mid-1980s.
Using a nimble mind, an obsession for detail and an ability to make useful political connections, Kyrus managed to help others reach commercial success and accumulate sizable holdings of his own from the mid-'50s through the 1980s. In the process he earned the grudging respect of competing businessmen.
The concept of rejuvenating the ``gateways'' to the resort through quality commercial development is not original to him, he concedes, but he finds it hard to understand the inability of the city's movers and shakers to see the obvious economic benefits.
``If I were 30 years old and hungry, I'd do it myself,'' he says. ``But I'm 66 now and I can't do it.''
While the competitive juices may have slowed, Kyrus remains active in community and church affairs and keeps a keen eye on the goings-on in his adopted town of Virginia Beach.
In recent years he has become a relaxed, sun-tanned world traveler, whose ports of call have included Bangkok, Hong Kong, Paris, the French Riviera, Munich and London. And there isn't much of the United States or Canada that Kyrus and his wife haven't covered either. San Francisco and his latest trip to Vancouver are places that drop readily from his tongue.
In each vacation destination, Kyrus has been quick to observe amenities that would serve the tourism industry of Virginia Beach - outdoor cafes along the streets of Paris, hanging flower pots on the street corners of Vancouver, swank china and jewelry shops on the Riviera.
While Kyrus' resort development ideas may make city politicians uneasy, they resonate well with the likes of Gerald Divaris, also a successful real estate developer in Virginia Beach.
Divaris, a South African native, has been instrumental in rejuvenating the Pembroke area and dreams of one day converting the Virginia Beach Boulevard, Independence Boulevard, Constitution Drive axis into the ``downtown'' of the city.
``I believe it's a good idea,'' he said of Kyrus' plans. ``But what he's proposing has been discussed many times by the city.
``The resort area of Virginia Beach would benefit greatly,'' Divaris said. ``It has a poor commercial reputation. In fact, if you look at it, there are too many T-shirt shops and souvenir shops and that doesn't bode well for extending the (tourist) seasons.''
Divaris said he believes the existing Center for the Arts and the annual Boardwalk Art Show could be used to provide a commercial nucleus for Kyrus' ``gateway'' plan. Using the established art theme along the Oceanfront, the city could encourage a virtual colony of artists, shops and dealers to sites along the ``gateway'' corridors.
``I would be 100 percent in support of the project, provided we don't have an extension of what is on Atlantic Avenue,'' he added.
City Council members Linwood Branch and William W. Harrison and Vice Mayor W.D. Sessoms say Kyrus' gateway plan has merit but needs further study.
``I think the 19th Street plan is extremely important to the area,'' said Harrison. ``But we have some things we've got to do first.
``There's not much you can do without the city's power of condemnation, because assembling that much property will be quite an undertaking.''
Kyrus, however, says that people like Divaris could get the job done without a lot of bureaucratic folderol.
The city must commit itself to doing basic things like widening sidewalks, burying power lines and installing tasteful landscaping - in short, the same thing it did with Atlantic Avenue.
``We do not have shopping in Virginia Beach,'' Kyrus says with emphasis. ``That's why the 60 or so homes on 19th Street are prime locations for commercial development. If it is done right, it's going to be one of the most interesting malls in the country.
``It would create commerce. It would attract a completely different crowd than you find on Atlantic Avenue.''
The son of a Greek-Cypriot farmer, Kyrus emigrated to the United States in 1947 at age 17. Staying with relatives in Norfolk, he attended Maury High School and in 1951 was drafted into the Army and served a tour of duty in Germany with the First Division.
Afterward he attended Norfolk Business College on the G.I. Bill and graduated with a degree in business administration. He sold mutual funds and life insurance until 1956, when he was married, earned his real estate license and went into the commercial real estate field.
``I think the background in real estate investments helped me understand the economy here,'' he said in a recent interview. ``I dealt primarily in assembling large tracts of land.''
Big chunks of the city were occupied by farms at the time and Kyrus helped get them for developers like Aragona, Bill Witt and later R.G. Moore.
After working for Larasan Realty for nearly 13 years, Kyrus opened his own real estate business, Kyrus Commercial, and in the late 1980s went into semi-retirement. He still has an office in a strip shopping center along Shore Drive and keeps tabs on his holdings while staying active in the Greek Orthodox Church.
He is on the board of the Bank of Tidewater, a position he holds with great pride. Another source of pride is his recent appointment as honorary consul for the Republic of Cyprus. Other honors include a 1984 citation by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his charitable and community service in Norfolk and Virginia Beach and his 10 years of service on the city's Resort Area Advisory Commission.
He has twin sons and two grandchildren. He and his wife, Elaine, live four months of each year in their second home in Naples, Fla. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
MAN WITH A PLAN
[Color Photo]
Thomas Kyrus
``If I were 30 years old and hungry, I'd do it myself. But I'm 66
now and I can't do it,'' Thomas C. Kyrus says in calling on the
city's movers and shakers.
In these artist's aerial views, traffic is funneled off Route 44
through a landscaped ``gateway'' onto 21st Street and several blocks
of tasteful, ``open air'' malls. These gateway routes would also be
on 17th, 19th and 31st streets.
Kyrus' plan would use existing residential and commercial buildings
to give the area an artsy flavor. The proposed facelift would also
feature a pedestrian walkway along this ``cottage row'' of
shopping.
KEYWORDS: DEVELOPMENT PROFILE INTERVIEW by CNB