THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 15, 1995 TAG: 9505120011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
The amphitheater Virginia Beach has envisioned for years withstood a double whammy last week. City Council decided that neither blow is lethal and approved a deal with nationwide promoter Cellar Door. The amphitheater will be built. The city, and the region, get an amenity for residents and an attraction for businesses and tourists this metropolis needs.
In the two problems that cropped up at the last minute, they also get a lesson in a municipal variation of Murphy's Law: If something can go wrong, city officials should have anticipated it, and priced its solution.
Whammy One was the news that stabilizing the soil at the Lake Ridge site requires moving a lot of extra dirt - and adding another $1.7 million to the structure's price tag.
Whammy Two was the news that the amphitheater on a golf course at Little Creek Amphibious Base, financed mostly with money from the Navy's morale, welfare and recreation fund, isn't the molehill for-military-only that the Beach had anticipated. It's a business that competes for some of the same entertainment acts and sells tickets by phone to the same audience the city/Cellar Door amphitheater tempts. But it has an edge the city and Cellar Door don't: The base amphitheater pays no amusement, meal or sales taxes so can charge its patrons less and pay its performers more. The really galling part: The Navy got the idea for improving its stage facility from last year's American Music Festival setup at the Oceanfront, planned by Cellar Door.
Moving the dirt, a matter of mechanics and money, is easier than moving the Navy, a matter of politics.
The added construction brings the city's share to $10.5 million for the structure. That's some $4 million more than initially estimated. Why? Apparently because initial estimates relied too heavily on 5-year-old construction costs and glossed too lightly over Virginia Beach's wobbly soils. The alarm about higher costs because of the city's high water table should have gone off louder and sooner than it did.
But it went off in time to amend the agreement between the city and Cellar Door: It caps the city's share at $10.5 million, plus some $250,000 in interest earnings. Cellar Door is in for at least $7 million, and anything over $17,750,000. Virginia Beach is still in for a payoff on its investment within seven years.
The Beach may be in as well for a fight it doesn't want with the Navy, particularly now as the Base Realignment and Closing Commission gears up. But by Department of Defense rules, events sponsored by a ``non-appropriated fund instrumentality'' - such as the Navy's Morale, Welfare and Recreation Fund - ``shall not directly compete with similar events offered in the local civilian community.'' They ``must be infrequent, not weekly or monthly. . . .'' And Little Creek is in Hampton Roads, not the Aleutians, where providing an amenity otherwise unavailable to military personnel could be readily justified, and security readily preserved.
There's no shortage of projects for MWR money, and turnout for the base concerts suggests they aren't highest on sailors' list. Limiting the Little Creek amphitheater to military personnel and families, or somehow levying on civilian tickets the same taxes the Beach amphitheater must pay would level the playing field. Whatever, some friendly solution should be possible, and talks to find it quickly under way. by CNB