THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 27, 1995 TAG: 9512280432
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
For years now, Suffolk has been regarded as the region's sleeping giant. Though the slumber continues, it became increasingly fitful in 1995.
There are signs that much of the 430-square-mile city will take on a different look - and perhaps a different role in the region - in the not-so-distant future.
For better or worse, interstate routes and other road improvements shorten the distance between cities, and Hampton Roads residents in growing numbers are learning that they can easily live in a pastoral setting in Suffolk while working in one of the region's more citylike cities.
That presents a real challenge. City services - water and sewers, police and fire protection, schools and other essentials - to accommodate new residents cost big bucks. Bigger bucks, certainly, than municipal taxes alone can provide.
That in turn invites the inevitable clash between new residents, who say they won't finance city services to longtime residents; and longtime residents, who say newcomers should pay their own way.
The pressure then rises to recruit industry to avoid becoming a bedroom city and provide a stronger tax base from which to finance public services for which demand is rising. Suffolk has immense areas suitable - and zoned - for industry, and city officials assure everyone that it will come. Some other Hampton Roads cities, they properly point out, are built out; Suffolk offers wide-open spaces.
The question Suffolk leaders must confront is whether that economic boost will come before or after costly residential growth.
That is, will developers exercise control over this vast city of such potential - and you need only look to Virginia Beach for an example of the consequences of that - or does city officialdom, with input from citizens, define the Suffolk of the future and place restrictions to make reality conform with definition.
While Suffolk's growth is concentrated in the north end - the area nearest the still-growing Churchland area of Portsmouth and Western Branch area of Chesapeake - commerce continues to increase near the central city, and residential growth occurs all over Suffolk.
That places burdens on narrow roads that were meant to be little-traveled rural routes and on schools that were placed where most people lived when they were built.
For as long as Suffolk has been dubbed a sleeping giant, the city has vowed to learn from the mistakes of previously developed Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. There's still time, even if not much.
Suffolk in 1995 named a long-range planner - a very smart move. While the city's agricultural heritage is rich, that clearly is not enough for a city of 63,000, a figure sure to rise.
1996 is an election year for three of the seven seats on City Council. A good question for residents is how alert the candidates are to the stirring of the sleeping giant and how they propose to control it as it awakens. by CNB