THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280372
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
A scrub-filled patch of real estate at the ragged edge of suburban sprawl will be transformed this spring into yet another battleground for the city's discount shoppers.
By a 6-4 vote, the City Council on Tuesday approved the construction of a super Wal-Mart retail store at Lynnhaven Parkway and Princess Anne Road.
The project is likely to permanently transform the look of Princess Anne Road just as it opens up into an area the city hoped will some day have parks, golf courses, a stadium and other recreational amenities.
Instead, the intersection will become a shopper's mecca of discount merchandise, food stores and assorted goods and become much more heavily congested with traffic.
Next month, a Chattanooga, Tenn.-based development company, C.B.L. & Associates Properties Inc., will begin building a 324,388-square-foot shopping complex centered around a 190,000-square-foot Wal-Mart.
The Wal-Mart will have all the amenities that have made the retailer a giant nationwide. Known for its wide selection of products and for promoting American-made goods, the new Wal-Mart will contain a grocery store that will compete with a Hannaford Brothers grocery store at the same location.
Councilman W.W. ``Bill'' Harrison Jr., of the Lynnhaven Borough, abstained from voting because his law firm represents Hannaford Brothers.
The debate was at times emotional, particularly among dissenting council members who worried that the project ignores the city's long-stated expectations that Princess Anne Road not be converted into a congested series of strip shopping malls.
``My vision for the property was something a little more grand,'' said a dejected Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf, who, like the minority on council, had hoped the area would be home to office complexes, research firms and a planned higher education campus farther south of the site.
Within an hour of the vote, the council faced another big retail proposal, this one by Target stores, which plans to open a 178,000-square-foot retail outlet to compete with Wal-Mart and, presumably, with a Super Kmart under construction about three miles away on Holland Road and Windsor Oaks Boulevard.
But that vote never came, as the council would not grant the company access to Princess Anne Road. Before it lost the vote, the company asked that its project be tabled for 30 days. That vote was 11-0.
The debate comes amid an unsettled debate about whether so-called ``big boxes,'' such as the one Wal-Mart plans, are appropriate for a community's long-range retail plans. The problem in putting too many in a community, critics argue, is that one could succumb to competition and close.
Judith L. Rosenblatt, member of the planning commission, has doubts about the emergence of ``big boxes'' into the Virginia Beach commercial market.
``The down side is that if people start shopping at, say, a super Wal-Mart, it's because they're no longer shopping at Kmart,'' she said. ``Something has to die for these `big boxes' to thrive. There is a threshold for us as consumers.''
Despite her concern, Rosenblatt voted for the project largely, she said, because she heard no opposition from the community.
``If there is a retail merchants association, then we've never heard from them.''
One of the nation's more outspoken critics of ``big box'' projects is writer James Howard Kunstler, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., resident whose book ``The Geography of Nowhere'' took a critical look at the nation's development policies of the past 50 years.
``Is Virginia Beach headed for retail apocalypse?'' he asked in a telephone interview earlier this week. ``Maybe. For one thing, it's probably inviting a volume of retail capacity that far exceeds its needs and that has some implications.
``One of them is that some of these companies are bound to lose. It's like the battle of the dinosaurs in that movie `1 Million Years B.C.,' where the brontosaurs and the tyranosaurs rex battle it out. When it's over, one will die and be left with its feet stuck in the air.
``Only in this case, what's left is a big empty building,'' Kunstler said.
``These buildings are never going to be civic assets.''
Councilwoman Louisa M. Strayhorn, who represents Kempsville, said that, while she has concerns, the city got Wal-Mart to improve the architectural standards to the point that it ``will probably be the best-looking Wal-Mart'' in the country.
In fact, the architectural improvements to the Wal-Mart store came after lengthy meetings Strayhorn held with the company's architects.
``I am not in favor of a proliferation of `big boxes,' '' Strayhorn said earlier this week. ``In places where this has been a problem is in small towns. We do not fit the same profile.''
Strayhorn said she asked company representatives why they would move in so close to each other.
``They told me that their marketing figures show they thrive when they are close,'' she said. ``Believe me, that was one of the first questions that came out of my mouth. They swear to me their studies show it's better for competition.
``Do I believe them? I don't know,'' she said.
Edwin Underwood, a retailing specialist with Richmond-based Scott & Stringfellow Inc., said the pairing of the two stores makes sense from the standpoint that each shares a customer base.
American retailing has seen similar competition between Sears and J.C. Penney, he said.
In the consumer electronics market, the Incredible Universe stores tried to open stores in the 150,000- square-foot range but found there were not enough consumer electronics to fill it, Underwood said. The company has since begun to scale back.
``You can fill up a Wal-Mart and a grocery store pretty quickly,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Virginian-Pilot Graphic
Proposed Superstores
Wal-Mart Site
Kmart site
by CNB