THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603220201
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Sometimes in the course of talking to people for one reason, a newspaper person gets into an interesting conversation about something else.
That happened to me last week when I called Janet Malone seeking information about the Chartway Care Team that's going to volunteer at the Fisher House Apartments.
Malone, it turns out, is married to the skipper of the carrier Enterprise. The Malones, by choice, live at the Naval Shipyard here.
``I really like Portsmouth,'' Malone told me.
She went on to talk about how easy it is to get from here to wherever you want to go.
``And it's so convenient to Ghent.''
Furthermore, there's no nicer place than Downtown Portsmouth and the waterfront, she added. ``What is any nicer than sitting up at Amory's Wharf looking at the river?''
Like most of us who carry on about this city, Malone gets a lot of questions from people who never come to Portsmouth and who have not discovered its charm. They don't understand how convenient it is to live here.
Anyway, it was a distinct pleasure to meet a Navy spouse via the telephone who was better at praising Portsmouth than I am.
Over the years, many Navy folks at the shipyard have seen Portsmouth's virtues - and wondered about the bad rap it gets from some people. In fact, that's usually the case with anybody who honestly becomes acquainted with the city.
Only those who do not bother to explore with an open mind continue to talk about Portsmouth negatively. Unfortunately, there are many of those people, and they don't know what they're talking about in many instances.
In fact, some of the people who took the city's bus tour aimed at converting military housing personnel to our side frankly admitted they had not been to Portsmouth in years. A few of them never had been here.
On the other hand, some who actually live here have very distorted notions of the city, too. They're the same people who say there's nothing to do in Portsmouth or the ones who really think Portsmouth is less safe than other cities and towns.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when a consultant makes recommendations for a sports arena location that would serve all of Hampton Roads. Any consultant who stayed clear of local politics would have to pick a Portsmouth site because it would be equidistant from all sides of the region. In addition, we do have land on interstate highways, including the Fairwood Homes site that had been designated for a proposed horse-racing track. The areas that had been rezoned for business could be used for businesses that would spring up around an arena.
Of course, Virginia Beach probably would refuse to participate if an arena were proposed for Portsmouth. In fact, the Beach mayor already has opted not to attend meetings that include all the other region's mayors, stating that the Beach would be not be interested if a proposal were going to hurt Beach business. Perhaps you could translate that to read, ``if the consultant suggests any place but the Beach''!
If indeed a consultant came up with the only logical site, that being Portsmouth, it would be good if everybody but Virginia Beach decided to go along with it. Nothing would be better for regionalism than putting the Beach on the outside and building a successful arena anyway. It's a good bet everybody would be willing to cooperate on the next project.
And people like Janet Malone would not be so unusual. We'd have ship skippers and their families clamoring to live at the shipyard. by CNB