THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605170206
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Drizzle turned to a steady and gentle rain around 7 p.m. Wednesday, but most of the 8,000 people who came to the new $18.5 million Virginia Beach Amphitheater to see Bruce Hornsby perform, stayed despite the chill and dampness.
Before Hornsby took the stage, Bill Reid of Cellar Door Entertainment and City Councilman William W. Harrison - decked out in black ties and tuxes and looking suave and debonair indeed - handed out kudos to a long list of city officials and nonofficials who had a hand in bringing the concert venue into being.
One name was conspicuously absent, however, and that was Timothy E. Barrow. Barrow, the tweedy, fussy and professorial former chairman of the Resort Area Advisory Commission, almost single-handedly saved the project from the dust bin of forgotten ideas 10 years ago. In fact, Barrow was not even invited to take part in what turned out to be a fun and festive opening program.
The slight was unintentional, I'm sure, and Barrow is not the type of guy to harbor ill will over such things, but it's a slight nonetheless.
While bouquets were handed out to folks who allegedly helped make the amphitheater happen, a nod should have been made to Barrow and fellow advisory commissioners. They thought up the project in the first place and kept pushing it doggedly, despite considerable resistance early on. Barrow, a former city planner and now a private planning consultant, led the charge while the City Council was pooh-poohing the whole idea as impractical, far-fetched and just another ploy to make resort merchants rich.
The advisory commission was appointed in 1984 by then mayor Bob Jones and assigned the task of creating plans to dress up a dismal resort strip. It was then a honky tonk area awash in a sea of garish neon signs, criss-crossed overhead by a web of utility wires.
Barrow and 17 commission members fashioned what corporate types these days call a ``mission statement.'' That statement outlined what the commission intended to do in coming years, namely to give the resort district a facelift, revive Oceanfront businesses and think up newer and bigger ways to expand tourism in Virginia Beach. The next thing they did was bring in the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank to suggest ways to accomplish their mission.
One of the things to emerge from the brainstorming was a plan to build a top-of-the-line amphitheater. Another was to expand the already highly successful Virginia Marine Science Museum. Still another item high on the to-do list was the expansion of the Pavilion Convention Center, a facility that was outmoded and too small almost from the time it opened in 1980. Five or six top-flight public golf courses joined the list as well.
Wednesday night, one amphitheater concert-goer pointed out that the city has opened a major attraction and is on the verge of opening another - an expanded marine science museum.
The Pavilion is a project advisory commissioners view as a major economic development tool that could attract gatherings as large as 20,000 people and the big bucks that come with them.
Still, the project has yet to get an official nod from City Council. When it does, think of the amphitheater and the expanded marine science museum and give fussy, tweedy ol' Tim Barrow and his band of resort planners a nod of appreciation. They deserve it. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Timothy E. Barrow, a former city planner and now a private planning
consultant, led the amphitheater charge while the City Council was
pooh-poohing the whole idea as impractical.
by CNB