
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994                    TAG: 9406160173 
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON                     PAGE: 06    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940617                                 LENGTH:

WISHING WON'T BUILD AN AMPHITHEATER

{LEAD} Now is not the time to make the Navy wonder whether the city really wants to keep the 11,000 jobs and half-billion-dollar economic boost of the Naval Air Station at Oceana. Not as the Navy is compiling reports crucial to the list of military facilities the Pentagon recommends be closed by next year's Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

So when, as staff writer Bill Reed reported the other day, the Navy opposes an amphitheater at Corporate Landing because the site's too close to Oceana, that's the end of an amphitheater at Corporate Landing.

{REST} But not of the amphitheater.

OK, it's not Nordstrom's, Norfolk's latest development coup. But it doesn't have to be: The amphitheater is a prime opportunity to begin to show that Virginia Beach can begin to turn a wish list that lengthens by the day into reality. After years of talk here, and with neighboring cities making competing noises, it's time this city finally makes a major project happen.

An amphitheater that would accommodate the top entertainers so scarce in these parts has been among the top projects envisioned for the Tourism Growth and Investment Fund, filled primarily from special taxes on hotel rooms, meals, amusements. It is intended to get off the drawing board attractions that produce visitors and revenue and enhance the city's quality of life.

The drawing board for TGIF projects seems at times more like an Etch-a-Sketch, the official stationery of this City Council: one day, the Pavilion expansion; the next, Oceanfront hurricane protection program; the next, Pavilion expansion plus convention hotel. Like any pot of money, TGIF attracts many mitts.

But the amphitheater plan survives. Its developer has been chosen. It's now looking for a home that offers adequate acreage, good road access, plentiful parking, some natural noise buffer and not too close to either Oceana or residential neighborhoods.

A city-owned site would save some money. There doesn't seem to be one, which raises a couple of questions: What should the city do to facilitate some other site? And how is it that the city has come to buy big plots of real estate which somehow don't suit its projects - or anybody else's?

by CNB