THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 17, 1996 TAG: 9605160165
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
The official opening this past Tuesday of Admiral's Landing on the downtown waterfront offers more than a cosmetic ``crown jewel'' for Portsmouth. It also is a source of gold for the city's coffers.
The building's assessed value is $6,292,210, and the land's value is $591,660, according to figures from the city assessor's office. More than half the condominiums, priced from $109,000 to $329,000, have contracts on them, Joel Gamel, president of project developer First Equitable Realty of Miami, said at Tuesday's ribbon-cutting ceremony. The property's assessed value is expected to increase next year based on more units having been sold.
The land between the Naval Hospital and Naval Shipyard, once a thriving hub of commerce in the city, has produced very little tax revenue over the past several decades. That's because much of Portsmouth's prime property fell into public ownership during the era of massive redevelopment in the 1960s and '70s in older cities across the country.
Mayor Gloria O. Webb is optimistic Portsmouth will be able to get more of its property onto tax rolls in the next few years.
``We want to get a nice hotel, maybe on the parking lot next to the federal building,'' she said the day after the Admiral's Landing opening.
In addition, ``small inn at Portside could be appropriate,'' she said. ``We also have the Signet Bank parking lot on the water.''
A sore subject with many citizens is the location of the city jail, courts buildings and parking lots on prime property - and many question why City Hall has remained on the waterfront.
In fact, city officials want to convert the six-story City Hall building to private commercial use to raise tax money.
Webb said the city already has asked for proposals for a new city headquarters.
Several sites have been proposed, and the most frequently mentioned is the Midtown area, either in the shopping center or at the site of the old I.C. Norcom High School. And the Vision 2005 economic development plan calls for creating a civic complex of some sort in the neighborhood of the new I.C. Norcom High School on London Boulevard, and some people have suggested that as a good site for City Hall.
Last year, when the U.S. Coast Guard leased space to move offices from Governors Island, N.Y., to Hampton Roads, Portsmouth offered City Hall. It was the right size and only a few blocks away from the federal building where the Coast Guard will move headquarters for the entire Eastern part of the United States from New York.
Portsmouth lost out to a Norfolk company because Portsmouth's City Hall is technically in a flood plain, said city Economic Development Director Matthew James. However, if the building's basement garage has ever flooded, it apparently has not been documented.
A second building in the City Hall complex, once the headquarters of Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority, is privately owned and houses health insurer Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield. The building and land together are assessed at $2,716,900.
City officials hope the opening of the waterfront condominiums this week will rejuvenate some other activities that were on track 10 years ago when the condo project, then known as Kings Crossing, was started.
The Seaboard building, formerly City Hall, was converted in the 1980s to apartments, offices and The Max restaurant. Part of the impetus for Max owner Charles Sears was the promise of the 61 upscale condominiums and townhouses across High Street. Instead, his beautiful restaurant faced an ugly, scarred construction site surrounded by barbed-wire fence. Ultimately, The Max filed for reorganization protection under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code in 1989, about a year after it opened, and moved to the former Seawall restaurant building, a 1960s waterfront project now owned by PRHA and once scheduled for demolition.
The space in the Seaboard building has been vacant for the past year since Riverfront Cafe, a second restaurant that leased the space, also closed. The privately owned building and land are on the assessor's books for almost $2 million.
Other privately held land in the redevelopment-target area between the hospital and shipyard is sparse. No. 1 Crawford, Signet Bank, the Holiday Inn and Tidewater Yacht Agency marina date to the 1960s. The building that houses the Post Office and the Coast Guard on High Street was built on redeveloped land and is owned by the federal government, which pays no tax.
Harbor Tower apartments at Portside and Crawford Square condominiums across from the Seaboard building on High Street came along in the 1980s.
The city has owned the former Coast Guard site south of City Hall for almost two decades but has failed to attract buyers for the site with a long view of the Elizabeth River. by CNB