DATE: Saturday, March 8, 1997               TAG: 9703080216

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   62 lines

HYBRID ROADWAY TO CONNECT BEACH, CHESAPEAKE BEACH TASK FORCE WANTS TO CREATE A UNIQUE ``GATEWAY'' THAT MIXES FUNCTION WITH BEAUTY.

A wooded parkway meandering between Oceana Naval Air Station and Chesapeake's Great Bridge section would make for a pretty drive. But it wouldn't suit the needs of the state's most populous city, a group of consultants and Beach officials decided Friday.

The group spent three days this week refining its vision for the proposed Southeastern Parkway and Greenbelt, a $380 million road project that would connect Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.

Group members decided to design something original, rather than imitating a traditional parkway: a road on rolling green terrain, crossed by quaint bridges.

``This facility is so far superior to anything else in this region, it'll knock people's socks off,'' Beach City Manager James K. Spore said Friday after seeing the latest design scheme for the roadway.

Task force members started off a two-day brainstorming session in January thinking they might try to copy the Colonial Parkway, which connects Yorktown, Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg. The Beach council had changed the name of the proposed road from the ``Southeastern Expressway'' to the ``Southeastern Parkway and Greenbelt'' to reflect that image.

But a parkway would need more land than the original plan, group members said, and therefore would cause more environmental damage and require the condemnation of more homes and businesses. A less conventional scheme - which the group called a ``community gateway'' - could avoid those problems, they said.

A parkway would be ``an attractive Route 44,'' said Robert Matthias, assistant to the city manager, cutting a wide swath across the middle of the city. A community gateway ``will allow the city to be sewn together a little more.''

The parkway might be a more pleasant driving experience, the group agreed, but a gateway - with its emphasis on connecting neighborhoods and activities on both sides - would be a better road to live near.

Those differences, however, are still sketchy. Landscape design consultants EDAW Inc. of Alexandria will spend the next month-and-a-half adding details to the gateway concept and will reconvene with the full group on April 30.

The task force, which includes two council members, landscape architects, engineers, planners and road builders, expects to present its vision to the City Council in late May.

Virginia Beach is paying EDAW $400,000 to help design a better highway, and has said it would be willing to pay more to make sure the new road doesn't repeat the mistakes of Route 44.

The Chesapeake City Council, which is still formally opposed to the project, has not been involved in the design, although about half of the proposed road's 21 miles are within its city's limits. The council was expected to reverse its position last month, but has not yet addressed the subject.

Whatever design is developed for the Virginia Beach section of the highway likely would be extended into Chesapeake, according to Beach officials.

Still unresolved is what to call this new hybrid highway. Everyone agrees that ``Southeastern Parkway and Greenbelt'' is too cumbersome, but the group couldn't reach a consensus on ``Community Gateway'' or ``Beachway'' - the only other suggestions.

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