DATE: Wednesday, November 5, 1997           TAG: 9711050461

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   66 lines

PARKING REVENUES HIT $1.7 MILLION AT BEACH DURING TOURIST SEASON

The city raised $1.7 million in Oceanfront parking lot, meter and ticket revenues during the tourist season, easily enough to make the annual lease payment on its new Oceanfront garage.

Figures released Tuesday by Henry Ruiz, head of the Parking Systems Management Office, show a $710,013 increase over 1996 parking revenues.

Two factors bolstered revenues this year: the opening in May of a new 742-space parking garage at Ninth Street and Atlantic Avenue and the reopening of a 130-space lot at 31st Street and the Oceanfront.

Last year, the city raised $1.02 million from its resort parking operations, generating cash through five lots and 750 parking meters in the resort area. Parking tickets generated a big chunk of cash as well.

These are the 1997 revenue totals from April through September:

Meters - $529,385.

Parking lots - $621,092.

Ninth Street garage - $187,028.

Parking tickets - $382,508.

The total revenues are sufficient to pay the first installment of a 20-year lease on the Ninth Street garage, which cost $7.2 million to build. Annual lease payments to a local development group amount to about $850,000, Ruiz said.

After subtracting the lease payment from the 1997 revenues, the Parking Systems Management Office will have a $878,013 balance. Minus operational expenses, the rest of the revenues will be channeled into the city's parking enterprise fund.

The fund will be used to underwrite future Oceanfront parking improvements, such as two more parking garages, which are in long-range development plans.

The first of these probably would be located on or near the Laskin Road-30th Street corridor.

The city opened the Ninth Street, three-story parking garage - the first of its kind on the Oceanfront - last spring. It was built with private capital and is leased by the city for daily public use. Of the 742 spaces, 610 are available for public use.

Terms of the lease call for the city to pay $16 million over a 20-year period and to keep any parking proceeds derived from the arrangement.

The ground floor of the structure was turned over to resort hotelier Vern Burlage, who owns the tract on which the garage was built. Burlage is leasing out 10,000 square feet of Atlantic Avenue frontage for retail use.

Megabytes Cyber Cafe and Bakery opened in late September on the ground floor of the parking garage. The 2,300-square-foot establishment features a restaurant, full-service bar, coffee shop and computer center. Users can go on-line, play games or publish work on a color printer.

He retains 225 ground-level parking spaces for use in connection with his Oceanfront businesses.

The city operates four ground-level municipal lots at Fourth, 19th and 25th streets during the summer and early fall, and a lot at 31st Street was leased for two years to Starship Ice, an ice-skating rink franchise with headquarters in Richmond. The lease expired in April and was not renewed, and the 31st Street property was reconverted into a municipal parking lot.

The Ninth Street garage dove-tailed perfectly with a 2-year-old Pacific Avenue Corridor Study, which called for transforming Pacific Avenue into a colorful, landscaped thoroughfare. It also called for slowing down traffic and encouraging Oceanfront visitors to park their cars and walk or ride trolleys.

The City Council has yet to act on the study's recommendations. ILLUSTRATION: REVENUE TALLY

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[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]

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