DATE: Sunday, June 22, 1997                 TAG: 9706200236

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 08   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: ON THE STREET 

SOURCE: Bill Reed 
                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

COUNCIL ON HOT SEAT OVER PARK DECISION

Tuesday is D-Day.

That's D as in Decision Day or D as in Delay Day and the terms apply to a couple of hot issues scheduled to come before the City Council.

One of them is the fate of the vacant Oceanfront tract at 31st Street, now being used as a municipal parking lot. Its future depends on how high concerned citizens turn up the Bunsen burner under the derrieres of council members.

Eventually the council must decide whether to convert the lot into a public park - an open vista to the sea - or allow the Economic Development Authority, which owns it, to convert it to commercial use of some sort.

Several weeks ago the council directed the Economic Development Department to come up with an arrangement that incorporates both interests in the vain hope all parties would be satisfied.

Development officials dutifully issued an RFP (request for proposal) on May 19 seeking interest from private developers in tying both public and commercial uses to the property.

Last Wednesday the department received three responses that addressed both interests - in varying degrees. Depending upon who gets the nod, the winning developer presumably could plant another 200-room hotel on the site, a nightclub-restaurant, a fast food franchise or a row of T-shirt shops, game arcades, bike and skate rental operations.

It is interesting that the Resort Area Advisory Commission, the citizens' group responsible for the beautification of Atlantic Avenue and the Boardwalk and coming up with the idea of the amphitheater and for planning a multitude of other tourism-related projects, has been excluded from the review process.

Instead, a panel of seven or eight city staff members, including the city manager and director of the the Economic Development Department, will do the honors.

Rather than make a hasty decision, council members could decide Tuesday to delay a vote on the matter and seek additional proposals. Or, they could go with the plans at hand.

A third and less palatable option is available to the council: swallow the $4 million in city funds already invested in the property and turn the entire 1.3 acres over to public use, complete with fountains, benches, landscaping and best of all - the view. This scenario doesn't include multi-story hotels, T-shirt shops, game arcades or pizza joints.

Last year the property contained an ice skating rink, an operation housed in an inflatable plastic cocoon. The rink's lease expired on March 31 and the ice maker and rental skates were trucked out. A group of citizens, led by Virginia Beach school teacher Doug Thompson and civic activist Maury Jackson, launched a campaign to save the Oceanfront tract for public use. They had in mind existing parks at 24th and 17th streets - only better.

Thompson, using student volunteers on occasion, has staked out the Boardwalk on weekends since mid-April gathering signatures from locals who agree that the lot should become a public park. As of week's end, he said he had amassed nearly 6,000 signatures.

Jackson, meanwhile, has written letters to the newspaper calling for the preservation of the lot. A transplanted Kansan, Jackson says it's the ocean, not a monolithic hotel, that has a magnetic appeal to Beach vistors.

``Virginia Beach had a $20 million surplus last year,'' said Jackson in a June 15 letter. ``This was the citizens' money. Let's use if for what the citizens want - a family park at 31st Street on the glorious Atlantic Ocean.''

Amen.

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