THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408060108
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 28 lines
Leave a hole in the fence and investor Edwin B. Lindsley Jr. will wriggle through and stake a claim. Mr. Lindsley says he's found enough holes in the city's claim to the Boardwalk and the beach at the Oceanfront to stop the proposed expansion of both by the U.S. Corps of Engineers. Virginia Beach, he says, can't prove it has marketable title.
The question isn't only whether the city has marketable title but whether the city needs it. The city has said it has all the claim on the property it needs. That's a little different, and a good thing, because title seemed to be a good question when the Corps asked it years ago. The city satisfied the Corps then.
City officials profess no nervousness about satisfying the Corps again. But the Beach and Mr. Lindsley have played high-stakes Monopoly before, and the folks who fill the community chest, city taxpayers, have to wonder: How much - to defend against what the city calls a ``ludicrous'' claim or to settle a challenge the city shouldn't have been vulnerable to? by CNB