THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601190005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
While staff writer Alex Marshall's recent articles on East Ocean View have drawn some heat, he is nonetheless to be commended for bringing the most complex urban-design issues in Hampton Roads to the forefront - where they belong.
In the past year, Marshall has focused numerous lengthy, in-depth and well-researched articles on the region's library systems and museums - and more recently on two local conundrums: East Ocean View and MacArthur Center.
None of these complex issues will generate simple solutions. East Ocean View offers the long-term possibility of a genuinely well-designed community at the cost of undergoing a protracted and crusty redevelopment. It will never be easy for any city to displace citizens, raze buildings and endure budget shuffling for a return that may come 25 years hence - particularly in a culture that favors instant gratification.
MacArthur Center may begin paying for itself within a year of its opening but at the same time represents a high-dollar game of Mr. Potato Head - an attempt at injecting the excrescencies of suburbia into an urban center.
The shopping mall will drop from the sky a carefully orchestrated deus ex machina that many hope will bring dollars to downtown but shows little sign of enhancing its immediate architectural surroundings, much less recognizing them. Pedestrians will be as inclined to linger outside MacArthur Center as in the middle of Brambleton Avenue.
Whether one agrees or disagrees isn't the point. Better solutions to problems - big or small - are generated by more clearly stating and understanding the problems.
Alex Marshall does a superb job of distilling the issues for his readers. He brings a sense of urgency and a sense of consequence to some of the most compelling problems in Hampton Roads. We're better off that he shares his insightful and informed vantage point.
PATRICK C. MASTERSON
Virginia Beach, Jan. 14, 1996 by CNB