THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9602020002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
Residents of Virginia Beach's largest historically black neighborhood - Seatack - have watched in anger and disbelief for the past decade as the city erected recreation centers with pools, racquetball courts, classrooms, gyms and locker rooms in other neighborhoods.
The newest rec centers, at Great Neck, Bayside and Princess Anne, average 83,000 square feet each and cost about $11 million apiece to build.
The 3,780-square-foot Seatack Community Center, with just two meeting rooms and a basketball hoop in the parking lot, pales by comparison.
Year after year Seatack residents have lobbied for a rec center of their own. Year after year the project was delayed. City officials several times threw up their hands, saying the area was hemmed in by Navy easements and wetlands restrictions which made construction impossible. But community activists and sympathetic City Council members did not give up.
Finally, City Council voted last spring to include an expanded Seatack Recreation Center, with full-court basketball, indoor pool and showers and locker rooms, in its capital-improvements plan. Although the 25,000-square-foot facility will still be significantly smaller than other city recreation centers, it includes all the amenities the Seatack community has requested.
The responsible city officials should be commended for staying on schedule with this important project and keeping their word. As promised, sealed bids for the project were received this month and are now being evaluated.
If all goes well, ground will be broken in April on the new $2.4 million facility. Doors to Seatack's long-awaited new recreation center should open in April 1997. by CNB