THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512020519
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 143 lines
Is Virginia Beach poised to finally have a real downtown?
After talking about it for more than two decades, city officials have taken a first, but giant, step toward creating a central business district for the sprawling, coastal suburb of 400,000 residents.
The Virginia Beach City Council last week passed radical zoning changes for the 87-acre tract around Pembroke Mall, clearing a legal hurdle to the central business district's development.
The central business district is bounded by South Independence Boulevard, Constitution Drive, Jeanne Street and the Norfolk-Southern railroad lines, south of Virginia Beach Boulevard. Pembroke Mall is at the center of the district, which runs east to Columbus Center, a new development with Barnes & Noble, Planet Music and a multiplex movie theater.
The council's action creates a zoning district where urban-type development is permitted. The current zoning, typical for suburban Virginia Beach, leads to low-scale development surrounded by seas of parking.
The new zoning code encourages high-rise buildings like One Columbus Center, recently built by Divaris Real Estate on Virginia Beach Boulevard in the district. It also discourages drive-through restaurants like the Taco Bell at the corner of Virginia Beach and South Independence boulevards.
The new zoning district won't take effect until after all the property owners agree to be bound by its restrictions.
Despite the zoning change, there are still miles to go before the area sprouts tall office buildings and hotels, walkways and a central park, warn those who have preceded Virginia Beach in similar endeavors around the country.
``You have to start off with enough critical mass to do it,'' said Sandy Pearson, executive vice president of Reston Town Center Associates.
Pearson's group oversees the Reston Town Center, an ``urban center'' in a suburban setting that Virginia Beach views as a key model for its central business district. Representatives from City Council, the planning commission and the Central Business District Association visited Reston's town center this summer.
``You can't do it piece by piece,'' Pearson said. ``When you're talking about critical mass you're talking about critical dollars. If you try to start from inception with a couple of pieces of it, I question whether you can achieve enough momentum to do it.''
By critical mass, Pearson means the city needs enough money to create a high-quality gathering place and enough building space to accommodate demand for upscale use, whether retail, office or residential.
Central Business District Association representatives have acknowledged that they will have a harder time developing a downtown because they do not have a single, extremely wealthy individual to back the project, like Reston did.
Robert E. Simon Jr., a developer who conceived in the 1960s of a planned community that would serve as a model alternative to suburbia, established the vision for Reston and supported it financially.
The concept of a town center fit into the master plan as part of the overall vision. But the intense period of planning did not begin until 1985. Reston Town Center, funded by private money, did not come on line until almost five years later.
Those involved in promoting Virginia Beach's central business district say they hope they're on their way to achieving something similar.
The next step involves development of a master plan outlining the different uses for the central business district core, height minimums for future buildings, design coordination, plans for pedestrian walkways and other details, said Burrell F. Saunders, president of Central Business District Association and a partner at CMSS Architects.
Coordinating the master plan will involve the Central Business District Association, a group comprising 150 companies in the Pembroke Mall area, the 12 property owners in the core area and the city's planning department.
No framework for these meetings has been established, but city officials are optimistic.
``I feel like the property owners are on board,'' said Vice Mayor William Sessoms Jr. ``There's no question this plan is for the long-term success of this area.''
Plans for grid street patterns, architectural building designs, sidewalk dimensions and a central park for the district hinge on financing, said Thomas C. Pauls, comprehensive planning coordinator in Virginia Beach's planning department.
``It needs to be worked out,'' he said.
Others say that the public and private sectors have already shown their support for this project - the public sector by voting for zoning and other changes and the private sector with visible participation in planning.
``This is an effort that has been supported by citizens of Virginia Beach, private citizens and private businesses,'' Saunders said.
The cost could be a huge burden, Reston's Pearson said. Reston Town Center has 500,000 square feet of office space, 225,000 square feet of retail and a 514-room Hyatt Regency Hotel with 32,000 square feet of meeting space. He estimated initial minimum costs to range between $175 million and $200 million. ``That's just to get it built,'' he said. ``At that point and time you figure for the first two to three years, you need enough money to operate because you're not going to be fully built and occupied and operating. . . . In that first three years, you could be looking at $300 million.''
``A bunch of property owners can't just get together to do something like this on this scale,'' he said. ``They wouldn't have the nerve or the resources to do it if things turn bad.''
The cost of the project, for which proponents have no estimates, should be offset by the market demand for space in that area, they say. And the area is extremely desirable. It has 96 percent occupancy rates, among the highest in Hampton Roads, said Gerald Divaris, president of Divaris Real Estate.
``It's not something that has been delayed for any reason other than the timing wasn't right,'' said Divaris, one of the central business district's biggest promoters.
``All these things that have been occurring . . . are really the building blocks that will make the central business district a reality,'' Divaris said.
Norfolk officials pledged millions and took more than a decade to create a downtown atmosphere in that city. The downtown area, once a few office buildings and some parking lots, now boasts a large convention center, two quality high-rise hotels, a waterfront park and mall, a nautical museum, and a baseball stadium. There are also plans for an upscale three-story mall.
Virginia Beach developers and city officials have long desired a downtown to rival Norfolk's but insist that theirs is different.
``The central business district is the uptown to Norfolk's downtown,'' Divaris said. He compared it to the Buckhead area in Atlanta, Century City outside Los Angeles or the Galleria area outside downtown Houston, all urban centers in their own right but not overshadowing the traditional metropolitan downtowns nearby.
``Every single traditional downtown has an uptown,'' Divaris said. ``They don't compete with one another; they complement one another.''
``What we're talking about is the natural evolution of the urban planning process.'' MEMO: Staff Writer Karen Weintraub contributed to this story. by CNB