THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 31, 1995 TAG: 9512290286
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 11 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: 1995: YEAR IN REVIEW
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
When Cellar Door Productions took over Oceanfront events a year ago, its assignment was to jazz up the daily entertainment and fill up more hotel rooms.
The results have been both pleasing and moderately profitable to resort business owners, and Cellar Door president Bill Reid sees opportunity for improvement.
One of Reid's big successes so far has been the American Music Festival, held over the Labor Day weekend for the last two years.
Show biz headliners like the Beach Boys, Kool and the Gang, the O'Jays and Three Dog Night brought large crowds to three Oceanfront stages, one of which was a 4,800-square-foot structure stretching across the beach at 5th Street.
But a 20,000-seat amphitheater, which the city is building on a tract abutting Princess Anne Park, is the real entertainment voltage generator, in Reid's eyes.
The $13 million facility should be finished by April and Reid and Cellar Door are expected to coordinate the shows with music festival schedules.
Another major Beach attraction that should get even bigger this year is the Virginia Marine Science Museum. Work is in progress on a $35 million expansion of an institution that already has established itself as one of the most popular of its kind in the state. It brings in more than 300,000 paying customers a year.
The museum will triple in size and offer visitors a bigger, more varied package. This will include a six-story IMAX theater, a 300,000-gallon aquarium, a sea turtle tank, a nature trail and a ``Salt Marsh'' building that will house an otter pool, an aviary and two marsh life exhibits. Once all additions are completed - perhaps by the end of 1996 - museum officials expect attedance to top 700,000.
A new attraction along the resort strip, which has all the makings of becoming a wintertime tradition, is the Holiday Lights at the Beach, a Boardwalk display that began at the end of November and will continue through Jan. 7. At last count, the program brought in 30,000 cars from all corners of Hampton Roads.
The display, which falls under the administration of Cellar Door, was the brainchild of the Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association and was designed to lure visitors to the resort strip at a time of year when most businesses there are shuttered.
An adjunct to the light show is a portable ice rink, Starship Ice, which was erected on a vacant lot on Atlantic Avenue at 31st Street.
So far, said rink owner Allan L. Harvie Jr., the facility has done a steady business, bringing in as many as 600 skaters on weekend days and nights. Reid and Harvie say they hope to make the light show and the ice rink regular features of the Oceanfront winter entertainment fare.
Meanwhile, city officials are trying to lure another major entertainment outlet to the Beach. This is a Carolina Opry theater, modeled after successful country-western operations in Myrtle Beach, S.C., bearing the same name. A likely place for the theater would be the old Dome site on Pacific Avenue, between 18th and 19th streets.
- Bill Reed ILLUSTRATION: Staff file photos by DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
Joanne Nichols of Virginia Beach enjoys the Embers at the American
Music Festival over Labor Day weekend.
Open to cars for the first time since it became a concrete walk,
the Boardwalk's panorama of holiday lights continues through Jan.
7.
by CNB