Lift freeze on Burton Station

For a generation, Virginia Beach has harbored hopes to turn Burton Station into an industrial park. Residents have waited for decades, watching their homes and streets deteriorate as nothing happened.

The city refused to provide water and sewer service to the neighborhood. It rezoned the area, then rezoned again, then sought condemnation powers to achieve what seemed to be the best use for the property: an office complex wedged between Norfolk International Airport and Northampton Boulevard.

While the city tried unsuccessfully to gather the money and consent to turn the neighborhood into an industrial center, property owners have been stymied in their own efforts to use their land or update their homes. And there's still no realistic development plan, even after so many decades.

It's time for Virginia Beach to get out of the way and allow the 20 remaining families, finally, to regain control of land they've held in some cases since the 1800s.

Last week, the City Council took a step in that direction, allowing one family to move its auto repair shop to the land they own in Burton Station. Willie Martin Jr. said he's not trying to make a fortune off his land; he simply wants to use it to create jobs down the road for the children. There's no valid reason to continue denying him that right while the city pursues a goal beyond its reach.

The area probably won't be developed as cohesively, or perhaps even as productively, as the city had hoped. It likely will continue to be a patchwork of businesses, homes, hotels and warehouses.

However, the city owns but 23 of the 400 acres in that corridor. It can't control the destiny of the area when the biggest chunks of the land are owned by Norfolk, the Norfolk Airport Authority and families. For Virginia Beach to use its regulatory powers to stop others' plans is wrong.

Reba McClanan, a Beach councilwoman since 1980, has watched the efforts of the city and acknowledged that the residents have been left too long in limbo.

"If we're not going to buy those people's property, we ought to let them go ahead and do these things," she said.

It's hard to argue with that simple logic.