THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 28, 1995 TAG: 9512280001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
This year in Portsmouth may be remembered for the record number of murders or, better, for City Council's unanimous approval of Vision 2005. That's a 10-year master plan for improving much of the city, including the Elizabeth River waterfront west from Norfolk Naval Shipyard to Frederick and Airline boulevards, and also much of High Street.
As important as the plan itself is the fact that citizens and businesses played an active role in developing it and remain active in implementing it. City Council unanimously approved the plan in February, and it is being carried out with such energy that it could be mainly completed in half the allotted time.
One of the plan's jewels, scheduled for completion in the spring of 1997, is a new inlet and TRT ferry landing at the foot of High Street, only a block from the Children's Museum of Virginia.
That museum drew 275,000 people in its first year, ending this month. Parents and children have given the museum rave reviews.
Vision 2005 provides an unusual opportunity for Ronald W. Massie, the city's new City Manager. As Norfolk Assistant City Manager he played a key role in redeveloping the Norfolk side of the Elizabeth River and bringing in new hotels. Now he intends to do the same for the Portsmouth side.
Ray Gindroz, a Pittsburgh, Pa., consultant who also played a large role in Norfolk's waterfront and downtown redevelopment, is brainstorming with Portsmouth citizen task forces to find the best way to realize Vision 2005.
Other talented people have gotten excited about Portsmouth. Peter Mooz, former director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, was hired this year as director of the Portsmouth Art Center located in the 1846 Court House building downtown. His credentials and connections in the arts world will serve the museum well.
Two mountains the city has yet to completely conquer are racial polarization and crime - though citizens are scaling those tough slopes.
The city is expanding a community policing program called NEAT, for Neighborhood Enhancement and Action Teams. Under the plan, two beat police and a neighborhood unite to fight crime. A pair of neighborhoods already have NEAT programs. The city has been divided into nine areas and six public housing regions, and the program is supposed to be implemented early next year.
With Portsmouth state courts seeming more like revolving doors than dispensers of justice, and with murder witnesses intimidated into silence, a federal task force began in August to track about two dozen of the city's most violent drug dealers. Roughly a third of the targeted criminals are now behind federal bars - with bond denied - and the most violent drug dealers are on notice that their fates will be decided in federal court, not the relatively lenient Portsmouth courts. For whatever reason, the murder rate plummeted at the end of the year.
This city of a little over 100,000 is about half black, half white, and too often one side accuses the other of racist politics. The city has a Face to Face With Race program that brings blacks and whites together in small study groups, but fewer than 100 people have participated. An expansion of that program is desirable.
As the year ends, citizens are playing a bigger role in revitalizing the city than ever before, and top talent has been recruited to help the city improve. Portsmouth is an old city with a new plan and a brightening future. by CNB