THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996 TAG: 9609230030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 106 lines
Resort planners visualize a pine-paneled lodge at the south end of Sandbridge. Its mammoth stone fireplace would showcase a lobby overlooking the ocean, near the entrance to Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
People from across the United States and Europe would check into any of 120 spacious suites at $150 to $250 a night and hop a tram to tour the wildlife refuge or nearby False Cape State Park.
Part of the dream is an adjacent rental outlet where high-rolling nature lovers could lease canoes, kayaks, backpacks, boots, foul-weather gear and camping equipment or buy books and pamphlets on wildfowl, game, reptiles and insects native to the fragile coastal strip.
That vision is part of a 2-year-old plan pulled from mothballs by the city's resort improvement gurus as a way to accomplish two goals:
Create a high-quality, potentially lucrative and ecology-based tourist destination.
Preserve the southern end of an essentially upscale and isolated seaside residential community from dense development.
The concept has been revived by the Resort Area Advisory Commission, a citizens panel that oversees tourism development in the city. Members believe now is the time to pursue it, for four basic reasons:
The city is extending sewer lines to Sandbridge, and within two years the system is slated to reach the municipally owned Little Island Park at the south end of Sandbridge.
The owner of the majority of the eight commercially zoned beachfront lots abutting Little Island Park is willing to help develop a high-quality, low-density inn that would add to, not detract, from surrounding property values.
Civic leaders in Sandbridge back the plan, because it would be the least disruptive of possible commercial alternatives.
City officials view eco-tourism as a development tool with increasing interest.
Chief proponent of the revisited plan is architect Roger Newill, chairman of the Resort Area Advisory Commission and a man given to creative musings at commission meetings. At this month's meeting, Newill resurrected the lodge plan, suggesting it could be tied in with recent moves by state and federal wildlife and park officials to open the two southern Virginia Beach preserves to more visitors.
It also could be blended with existing Little Island buildings - an old lifesaving station, restrooms, a fishing pier and a 600-car parking lot, Newill said. The buildings could be spruced up and property landscaped. Addition of a swimming pool and tennis courts would add a country club flavor to the complex. Day use of public property would be continued, and it also would be enjoyed by patrons of the lodge.
Newill told commissioners that seven of the commercially zoned lots abutting Little Island can be developed for many uses, from a convenience store to a condominium complex with up to 120 units per acre.
Doug Wilkins owns the lots and the Baja Restaurant across Sandpiper Road from them. Wilkins says he is willing to be part of an up-scale lodge plan as long as his financial interests are protected. He is negotiating for the purchase of the eighth lot.
``I'm excited about it. I'm excited about what they're saying,'' Wilkins says of the lodge plans. ``I'm going to be a good steward of the land as long as I can.''
Sandbridge residents like Molly Brown, also a member of the Resort Area Advisory Commission, would like to keep commercial development in the community to a minimum. Brown is also a member of the Sandbridge Beach Civic League, which has been battling for years to persuade the City Council to dump tons of sand on the neighborhood's shrinking beaches.
``The civic league has made it loud and clear that it wants something top-quality and small in scale - not 1,200 rooms,'' she said at a recent commission meeting.
In a recent interview, however, Brown said the Sandbridge community's first priority is replenishing the beaches to preserve oceanfront homes from the ravages of the sea: ``The community is focused on sand,'' she said. ``That project is to be funded next year. That has to come before anything else. If we don't get a sand replenishment project down here, that lodge will never be built.''
Civic league president Fred Greene is upbeat about a lodge development. ``We would applaud something of that value and support it,'' he said.
But there are skeptics.
Tom Lyons, whose Tidewater Inn Management company owns 12 Hampton Roads hotels, is not convinced of the practicality of erecting a top-quality Sandbridge hostelry dependent on upscale nature buffs.
``I don't know much about eco-tourism and I don't know whether it's been successful anywhere else,'' he said. ``It's an idea that bears a lot of study.''
Another apparent doubter is Planning Commission chairman Robert H. Vakos, a resort hotel owner himself, who wants to know what private interests would step forward to invest in the lodge.
``This is the third major hotel I've heard about in the last year,'' he told commissioners recently. ``One at Lake Ridge, one at Pavilion and now one at Sandbridge. Who are you going to get to do it?''
Newill shrugged. That's for advisory commission members and city planners to determine through further study, he replied. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH, The
Virginian-Pilot
This tract of land next to Virginia Beach's Little Island Park could
one day house a resort for nature lovers.
Doug Wilkins, who owns most of the land, wants to help the city
develop a high-quality inn that would add value to nearby
residential property.
Map
KEYWORDS: SANDBRIDGE COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT by CNB