
DATE: Thursday, October 23, 1997            TAG: 9710230526

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONI GUAGENTI, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  133 lines

A CITY DIVIDED: GROWING PAINS

Margaret Eure has earned every swing she takes, every putt she makes on the golf course.

But she doesn't like to say why.

She and her husband, Jay Eure, started a portable toilet business in 1967. They decided they could do the business better than what was available at the time.

The Eures were right.

They later expanded the company to include traffic-control signs and barricade rentals for construction sites. The company became the largest dealer of its kind on the East Coast in the 1980s.

``It's old news,'' Eure says with her thick Southern drawl. ``People who know Margaret Eure will know about the company.''

If success isn't her middle name, it should be. Hard work should be in there, too.

Because of those ingredients, Eure can boast of being a semi-retired businesswoman who has been playing a lot of golf.

The Eures sold the portable toilet business in 1988, but the family, with the help of their two sons, has returned to rebuild their Chesapeake-based empire.

What made Eure a success as a businesswoman, as a wife, mother and grandmother, has fashioned her views as a Virginia Beach Planning Commission member.

She holds strong opinions about the construction industry, development, property rights and the city's Green Line, the boundary established in 1979 to curtail sprawl and save taxpayers' money.

Eure sees a city in a much different position today than it was when the line was drawn. That's why Eure found herself in the majority on the Planning Commission late in the summer when its members voted to allow development south of the line on a case-by-case basis.

Those recommendations were part of the commission's proposed Comprehensive Plan, which is a blueprint for future development. The plan is now in the hands of the City Council, which has the final say on it.

``The Green Line has not moved, we've made that commitment,'' Eure says at her spacious four-bedroom home in Kempsville's Lake James subdivision. ``What we've done is put some flexibility in the plan.''

Some of her detractors wouldn't see it that way.

Mary M. Heinricht, an environmental consultant, says the Eures, because of their construction company, have been involved with business-as-usual development, the kind the city can't afford to allow any longer.

``Everybody expects to keep doing it the way we've done it for the last 20 years,'' Heinricht says. Eure ``doesn't have a different point of view to consider things.''

Eure's point of view has been consistent.

``I've always believed that a person's greatest asset is what he owns, the land, his house, that's the American dream to own land,'' Eure says. ``For us to sit here and say that from now through the next 20 years that absolutely nothing will be built on a piece of land. . . . I wouldn't like that to have been done to me.''

Eure is a Norfolk native but moved to what is now Chesapeake when she was 6.

Her father was a civil service worker, her mother a clerk for a Norfolk department store.

``I was really raised in the country, but I never would go back to it, and I never liked it,'' she says with authority. ``I really like people; I like civilization; I like cities.''

But that doesn't mean, Eure says, that she wants to see the city's rural half become another Kempsville, her home territory.

``I'm for controlled growth and absolutely am not for just opening up the southern end of the city and putting big projects in there,'' Eure says.

She also doesn't want more development crammed in the northern section of the city.

``There's not a lot of buildable land in the northern end of the city,'' Eure says. ``Why should you build on every lot? The northern end needs fresh air and green trees and open space. They have absorbed so much already.''

Family and religion are cornerstones for Eure. She and her husband have two sons, Stan and Brian, and four grandchildren.

Family photos clutter her spotless kitchen.

Although Eure won't divulge her age, she will readily admit she's a grandmother.

``They call me Granny,'' she says with a twinkle.

Such affection belies her tenacity.

``I am pretty outspoken,'' she says. ``I pretty much know what I think; I am not real subject to change.''

At a Planning Commission meeting in May, Eure chastised two people for complaining about a road that might be extended into their neighborhood if the commission approved a proposed subdivision.

``I still cannot get over the fact that at this last meeting two adult fathers stood in front of us and bragged of the fact that their children play in the street,'' Eure said at the meeting. ``It is a public street. It is for autos, not for a playground.''

Eddie Bourdon, a local attorney, says Eure is pragmatic, not antagonistic.

``She's very direct, she doesn't sugarcoat things.''

Eure was first appointed to the commission by former Councilman Robert Clyburn in 1992.

Councilwoman Louisa M. Strayhorn, who won the Kempsville Borough seat in the last election, decided to give Eure another four years.

Strayhorn admits she and Eure don't always see eye-to-eye on issues.

``I think sometimes her approach, in my opinion, is short time,'' Strayhorn says. But, ``I respect her, I just don't always agree with her.''

Strayhorn says the two work well together, despite their differences.

Part of the reason, Strayhorn says, she reappointed Eure was because of what she puts into her service.

``Margaret has always done her work - she's been such a super representative,'' Strayhorn says.

Eure admits to having a strong sense of community involvement and activism that goes back to her days of living in Chesapeake.

She helped drum up membership for Chesapeake's Chamber of Commerce in the 1980s, reaching a goal of 100 new members.

She also played a pivotal role in the merger of all the chambers of commerce in South Hampton Roads into one regional group.

She also served one year as president of the National Association of Women in Construction.

Because of her background, she leans ``toward reasonable and good growth,'' says Daniel Arris, a former Planning Commission chairman now on the School Board.

Eure points out that her industry doesn't just build houses. ``It builds railroads, it builds airports, it builds highways, it builds nuclear stations.''

And golf courses.

Don't ask Eure her handicap, though, she won't tell. MEMO: Coming Saturday: A report on the city's Comprehensive Plan. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

CHARLIE MEADS

The Virginian-Pilot

Margaret Eure

VIRGINIA BEACH'S GREEN LINE PLAN

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