DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997                TAG: 9704180628

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   45 lines

6 AZALEA FLOATS WILL LOSE THEIR HOME AFTER FESTIVAL

An international incident is brewing - one that could leave Iceland in the cold.

The nation's parade float is one of six that will be homeless after next week's International Azalea Festival, an annual event honoring NATO.

The floats of Spain, Turkey, Holland, Norway and Luxembourg - which are traditionally stored downtown and reused every spring - will also be left without a place to stay.

The float flap began last fall, when the city said it was tearing down the municipal garage that the floats had been stored in. City officials said those floats would need to find new homes. Ten other floats, representing the rest of the NATO countries, are kept elsewhere.

Navy brass came to the rescue and gave the six evicted floats refuge in an air station hangar, where they have been since Christmas. But the refuge was temporary, because the hangar is going to be torn down as well.

Iceland's 10-year-old Viking ship is 30 feet long and 13 feet high.

``You can't keep something like that in your driveway,'' said Sella Seifert, president of the Icelandic American Association of Hampton Roads. She parked Iceland's float in her Commodore Park driveway and will redecorate it there.

After the parade, ``if nothing's found, we'll keep it here 10 days, then take it apart, and we'll be out of the parade business,'' Seifert said.

The festival is sponsored by the city, the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce and NATO. Kristin Bakke, festival director and a chamber staff member, said the city simply has no place to store the floats. She hopes someone in the community might find a home for them.

Said Seifert: ``I have a hard time believing there's no place. We do it for the city . . . We were asked to do it. ``Now we're homeless.'' MEMO: Anyone with ideas for storing the floats the Hampton Roads

Chamber of Commerce at 622-2312. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by GARY C. KNAPP

Sella Seifert has Iceland's float in her driveway. After the Azalea

Festival, the float cannot go back the Navy hangar it had been

stored in.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu