Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 7, 1994 TAG: 9411070071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: QUANTICO LENGTH: Medium
The waterfront town of Quantico is struggling to establish a new identity beyond the giant marine base that flanks it on three sides.
The Prince William County community of 640 residents sits in isolation, accessible by car only via one of the Quantico Marine Base's two gates, which are guarded by military police.
``Quantico is likely to just dry up and disappear unless the folks there can find something that makes the town economically, politically or socially attractive to tourists,'' said Dennis Ekberg, who for five years served as county chairman of the historical commission. ``Right now, they just don't seem to have it.''
Visitors are so scarce that virtually no one ever gets a ticket at the town parking meters, so frightened are the locals of discouraging the few who come there.
There are no churches, no schools and no supermarkets along the narrow streets of the 40-acre community. Instead, the downtown is marked by the picturesque but underused Potomac riverfront, rows of houses left over from its earliest days as a logging and fishing town and half a dozen old-fashioned barber shops packed daily with Marines looking for buzz cuts.
The town has a ``Beaver Cleaver feel'' to it, said Bill Poshock, who manages the Quantico Florist and claims Quantico hasn't changed much in a half century, either in appearance or in its concerns.
Most residents are short-term renters or older people who have lived and worked there all their lives. Many have some connection with the 60,000-acre base.
``People think that because this place is surrounded by Marines, that it has to do well,'' said Albert Gasser, a former mayor of Quantico who owns the Command Post Pub, one of the town's most popular watering holes.
But Marine bases of the 1990s have much in the way of shopping and restaurants that Marines used to have to come to town for. Gasser recently began a costly renovation of his business to attract new customers and compete with restaurants that have opened on the base.
Other business owners say the town needs some trendy antique and craft stores like those in Occoquan, another riverfront Prince William town that has become a tourist mecca.
``We need to provide people with a reason to come here,'' said town council member Mitchell Raftelis, who has lived in Quantico since 1922 and runs an accounting business there. ``We need investors who are willing to take a chance.''
For years, locals have dreamed of building a marina on the edge of town to attract tourist dollars. Property along the town's southern tip was donated to the town by the Marine Corps in 1985, but the marina project has been mired in red tape ever since.
Hopes of revitalization were raised again in 1993, when Virginia Railway Express established a commuter rail stop in Quantico. But so far, there is no evidence of new residents or the kind of gentrification that turns old towns into Olde Townes.
by CNB