VIRGINIA BEACH
After 20 years, owner Gail Higgs felt it was time The Marina at Marina Shores got a makeover.
"I liked it when I built it, but now it feels 1980s," she said. She calls her planned project "a functional, architectural face-lift."
Starting in early 2009, a new, 220,000-square-foot building will begin to rise at the marina. It will be built in five stages and take between five and 10 years, she said, and is to feature retail on the lower level with office space above.
About midway through the project, the old marina on Long Creek, just off the Lynnhaven Inlet, is to be demolished.
"I want this place to be a premier destination marina," Higgs said.
Among the amenities will be aqua-colored windows and a five-level parking garage.
Higgs, who runs the Kane Marie Fine Arts Gallery in Virginia Beach, made original artwork a theme of the current marina building. She's even hosted art shows there.
"A building is like any other work of art," Higgs said. "Its visual impact is critical."
The Marina Shores development, off Great Neck Road, began in 1961, when Higgs' late husband, David I. Levine, bought the land.
It featured single- and multi-family homes in addition to the marina building, boat slips, 500-boat storage building and retail space.
The 12,000-square-foot marina building was built in the late 1980s.
The new building, Higgs promises, "is not going to look dated 30 years from now."
Higgs is also steering a sister development at Great Neck Road and Lynnhaven Drive, the Marina Shores Shops.
The shopping center, on an outparcel in front of Higgs' existing Marina Shores shopping center, will have space for seven retail shops.
The center, which should be complete in spring 2009, will feature tall ceilings and a large weather vane in the shape of a fish.
John Warren, (757) 222-5114, john.warren@pilotonline.com
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