THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412230226
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
By this time today, the packages under the tree have been ripped open, the contents of those stockings hung by the chimney with care have been dumped on the floor and those new toys have been well broken in or just plain broken.
Bleary-eyed moms and dads will be groping around the kitchen for coffee to refill their empty mugs.
Their offspring, meanwhile, will be stampeding through the house with new electronic gizmos, Matchbox cars, Barbie dolls, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers things, stuffed Lion King Talking Simbas, roller blades, skate boards and even a bike or tricycle.
But what about the City of Virginia Beach? What did Santa put under the tree for the city?
Well, those wise old City Hall watchers, private eye Nucks Nolan and the Sage of 17th Street, offer these gift suggestions:
Water. Santa, please bring us lots and lots of water and make it come through a new and shiny Lake Gaston pipeline. And don't tell Jesse Helms.
Lots and lots of pollution-free, tax-paying businesses and high-tech industries to occupy all that vacant land in Corporate Landing office park, which the city's Development Authority owns and can't get rid of.
An amphitheater, one that seats 15,000 to 20,000 people. Maybe one day soon locals can hear Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffet or Whitney Houston wail some of their pop standards. It beats listening to the City Council jaw-boning any day.
A lot of money in the toe of the stocking to replace:
A. The $35 million snatched from the city's Tourism Growth Investment Fund to help fund a $100 million Hurricane Protection project for the resort waterfront.
B. The $11 million a year earmarked for road maintenance and highway construction that will be lost when the governor removes the tolls Oct. 1 from the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway.
C. The $20 million a year that will be lost to the city when the governor ends the authority of localities - Virginia Beach included - to tax business receipts.
A snazzy attraction to replace the Dome, which was torn down last fall to make room for more parking spaces along
Pacific Avenue. But please, Santa, don't let it be some tacky, cornpone, neon entertainment palace that will go belly up in five years or less.
That horse track that the Virginia Racing Commission awarded to New Kent County rather than Virginia Beach, but which probably won't be built in this century or the next because its backers can't dig up the loot.
Old-fashioned civility restored to the resort strip on summer nights and cops with enough moxie to see that it is restored.
That expansion to the Seatack Recreation Center that was promised by the City Council back in the spring. And maybe, Santa, you could even toss in an indoor swimming pool - one that won't leak or break down like those pools in the Great Neck, Princess Anne and Bayside recreation centers.
A $35 million expansion to the Pavilion Convention Center, the one that was put on hold by city officials who wanted to divert the money to help pay for the Hurricane Protection project.
Five or six tournament-quality golf courses that will bring in lots of high-rolling, big-spending, out-of-town linksters, who like to travel all over the nation to chase a teensie white ball across the countryside.
A hoity-toity, five-star, 400-or-500-room convention hotel at the Rudee Loop to provide a solid business anchor for the resort strip.
Thank you, Santa, say Nucks and the Sage, as they put the finishing touches to the list.
They then raise their glasses of week-old, double-rectified, aged-in-the bottle corn squeezin's high in a holiday toast to all folks who make up the City of Virginia Beach and wish them a very Merry Christmas. by CNB