DATE: Wednesday, April 2, 1997              TAG: 9704010223

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: PUBLIC LIFE 

SOURCE:    - By Jon Glass

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   47 lines

UPDATE: A DECADE AGO, URBAN CONSULTANTS RECOMMENDED THAT NORFOLK CREATESEVERAL ``GATEWAYS'' INTO OCEAN VIEW BY DRESSING UP PARTS OF SOME STREETS. ONE AREA WAS THE NORTHERN END OF CHESAPEAKE BOULEVARD. WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

Nearly 10 years after the idea was hatched, construction work is under way to widen what Norfolk officials call the ``unfinished piece'' of Chesapeake Boulevard.

As far as road contracts go, the half-mile project seems like small potatoes - not one with the type of environmental or economic baggage known to delay some projects for years.

But it got caught up in the sometimes tumultous debate over how best to improve the seven-mile strip of Ocean View from Willoughby Spit to Little Creek Inlet.

The work, begun in late March, involves widening Chesapeake Boulevard to four lanes between Leicester and East Ocean View avenues - the boulevard's last two-lane section.

When completed, it will serve as a ``gateway'' into Ocean View, part of planned improvements to revitalize the bay resort.

``It'll provide a much nicer gateway into the community,'' said John Keifer, the city's public works director. ``We're trying to make it look nice.''

The project, expected to take two years, will feature a four-lane divided roadway with wide medians, landscaping, new street lighting, sidewalks and improved drainage, officials say.

The idea to widen the half-mile stretch began in 1987, when an Urban Land Institute study recommended the city create several gateways into Ocean View.

But its cost - estimated at $3.2 million in 1991 but now set at $4.6 million - and community reaction stalled the project.

At public hearings in 1991, residents in Ocean View and nearby neighborhoods argued that more pressing projects deserved attention - such as improvements to 4th View Street or a new Shore Drive Bridge.

Since then, Norfolk has spent $754,000 to construct a median to address traffic problems at 4th View, while construction on a new $8 million Shore Drive Bridge is scheduled to begin in summer 1998.

Initial work on the widening has doomed some trees. A few property owners will lose parking spaces and road frontage. ``If we've got to give up a toe to save a foot we'll be glad to do it, because the area needed attention, and finally we're getting some,'' said Judy Boone, whose Ocean View realty company is at the intersection of the planned gateway.

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