Posts Tagged ‘downtown Virginia Beach’
Downtown Virginia Beach part 2
Posted on: November 20, 2008
- In: opinion | politics
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There are going to be some angry taxpayers in Virginia Beach.
Now the city wants taxpayers to pony up almost twice as much to pay for the next development in Town Center, $56.4 million, which would include another Aloft hotel, 195 apartments no one can afford to live in, an actual office tower, which traditionally downtown would or should have, and a garage.
It a beautiful thing that Town Center will actually include an office tower, and that Virginia Beach will have something taller than the office space around the Mall in the Lynnhaven area. It’s a bad thing that taxpayers have to pay for it.
Perhaps this is because they are short $81 million. Or perhaps it is because Armada Hoffler is Virginia Beach, you would think considering the statement that a single entity is behind the construction of a major cities downtown, either way it sucks.
Taxpayers should not bear the burden, they have already bore the burden of building the convention center that seems underutilized, among other things. Virginia Beach desperately needs a downtown, considering the numerous tens of blocks that Norfolk, a city almost half the size of Virginia Beach has. At the same time the downtown is not organic or real in any stretch of the imagination, this is a master plan micromanaged and built to perfection in a city that strives in every way to come off as the perfect place to be.
Town Center has generated around $5.2 million in revenue, in it’s own defense. I love the idea that this post-suburb is building a downtown. I hate the idea that said downtown is synthetic though. On the bright side, $56.4 million isn’t that much for a city of almost 500,000.
You get nice upscale shopping like Anthropologie, some of which the city already had, just scattered all over the place. Interestingly enough though you don’t get an actual upscale shopping mall, just enough shops to comprise of one in a tight space.
So this pretty much sums it up. Virginia Beach should have Town Center, should have done it years ago and quite honestly, never should have allowed cities like Portsmouth and Norfolk to have bigger downtown areas than they do to begin with. You can’t have a city of that magnitude and not have anything truly urban about the place; it looks foolish, should leave you feeling embarrassed and suggests that the nostalgia about suburbia, which is outright adolescence considering the situation that Virginia Beach is in is the order of the day. At the same time developers that insist on carrying this vision out, as well as the city leadership they work in conjunction with, need to find a way to pay for this thing without asking anything from the taxpayers.
You have to love Virginia Beach
Posted on: October 26, 2008
Virginia Beach, what the hell man I just read today that they’re planning to spend $200,000 to build a wrought iron fence alongside Virginia Beach Boulevard to keep people from crossing downtown to go to Pembroke inbetween Independence Boulevard and Constitution Drive, wtf? Not only is a three million dollar crosswalk a bad idea, but spending another 200k to idiot proof walking across the street because people are doing it inbetween intersections is just the straw that breaks the camels back.
Are you really serious? Because the way I’m understanding it they wanted the traffic light to be as short as it is because it would cause traffic backups for miles, which sounds like a way of overputting it but okay I’ll work with you there. Because quite honestly, it sounds as though the drivers going around Town Center are more important than the pedestrians with that point of view. So you build a downtown out of scratch, it is relatively safe but of course you still have like a 45 mph limit going down an 8 lane road, which you should. But again, you have an 8 lane road going through a downtown area, which isn’t good at all.
Then on top of that instead of installing speed bumps, or actually lowing the limit you find the pedestrians at fault for jaywalking, which is par for the course downtown. If you want to prevent the jaywalking, do as they do in New York City in Times Square and actually give out tickets for the offense; that much may stop people from doing so. This is supposed to be the start of something big, like Michigan Avenue in Chicago, so there needs to be a more reasonable way of going about this. Not to mention the ugly asthetics of a wrought iron fence, or a crosswalk that merely goes across the street, instead of one building to another, to begin with.
Virignia Beach, shame, I have to say I’m dissapointed. On the bright side more of Town Center is being built, though I’m still waiting to see what happens with that multilevel WalMart that was rumored to be in the works across the street.
- In: Hampton Roads | Norfolk | opinion | Virginia Beach | Waterside
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Apparantly Waterside has some serious money problems. Funny thing though, they aren’t paying their taxes, but they are owned by the city of Norfolk. Strange I know. In any event I figured I’d check the place out since their days are numbered. It’s turned into a seedy place as I am to understand, but I like being a part of history.
Bills swap meet, or whatever that was in Virginia Beach, finally closed, well it was burnt down. That used to be my spot, reminded me of an old roller rink, but it was actually an electronics store I think. I’m looking to see “downtown” Virginia Beach expand past the old Gateway store out towards that way. Some magically deal will come about where the city of Virginia Beach offers to integrate those existing stores around there vertically, perhaps even Pembroke Mall. If they ever want to compete with downtown Norfolk they’ll have to. GIve it some time, it would take a lot of money and a lot of opposition but I think what we’ve seen with downtown Virginia Beach is just the first phase.
okay so the skinny jeans didn't work out for me so well ... 
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