Developers pitch Town Center-like project for Oceanfront

VIRGINIA BEACH

Two Oceanfront landholders are shopping around a half-billion-dollar concept to create a mixed-use village, complete with a light-rail station, on what is now the Colony Mobile Home Park.

The developers call their idea Ocean Center and note it could be the resort area's equivalent to Town Center, the designed downtown that city officials hail as their jewel of redevelopment.

"That sits on 20 acres," said Whitt Sessoms of Cape Development and Real Estate Co., referring to Town Center. "We're talking about 50 acres."

Sessoms teamed with Eddie Chaplain, whose family owns the trailer park, to form a property bounded by Virginia Beach Boulevard and Norfolk Avenue.

Although it's just talk now, the idea has made its way into the Resort Area Master Plan. The City Council is expected to adopt the $300,000 master plan soon, including the drawings of the unnamed, mixed-use development where the mobile home park sits.

Sessoms and Chaplain have met with Sasaki Associates Inc., the Massachusetts firm that drew up the city's plan. Beach representatives have also met with the developers, pushing for a broader concept.

"The larger you make the parcel," Councilman John Uhrin said, "the grander the vision can be."

The use of public funds has not been heavily discussed, and council members have not talked about the plan as a group.

Preliminary site drawings depict Ocean Center with offices, shopping, restaurants and homes. Those plans include a 320-room hotel, 800,000 square feet of office space and about 600 townhouses or apartments. The cost is estimated at anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion.

Sessoms and Chaplain haven't decided how to divide their land or which developers to work with. Sessoms said they are looking for national firms that specialize in mixed-use development.

Any developer would have to talk with the Navy, Sessoms said, to ensure the plans don't conflict with Oceana Naval Air Station.

The plan would need rezonings from the city and the eventual approval of City Council. And the light-rail line is years from happening, if at all. Still, city officials believe the plan could change the face of the resort.

"It's probably the only area in the resort area - maybe even in the Beach district as a larger component - that has 50 acres of underdeveloped property," Uhrin said. "There's just some great opportunities there."

The proposal isn't the first for the trailer park, one of the largest potential redevelopment locations near the resort. In 2004, officials flirted with condemning the Chaplain family's land to make room for a middle school. The plan was scrapped after resident outcry.

Sessoms says replacing the trailer park with Ocean Center would spark a mass redevelopment. He argues it would link one of the largest available redevelopment tracts in the city to the Boardwalk - less than a mile east - and the Virginia Beach Convention Center - just two blocks north.

"They have tremendous potential if they look at it in the context of the Oceanfront," said Jack Whitney, the city's planning director.

Sessoms said the plan combines about 8 acres he co-owns and the 35-acre trailer complex owned by the Chaplain clan. But it also incorporates a public parcel that tax records show covers 2.5 acres.

"We're all ears," Whitney said. "We think that investment in the Oceanfront - as investment in Town Center and Princess Anne Commons - returns on itself to the community."

Sessoms' site plans show parking on public land across 17th Street, which is known as Virginia Beach Boulevard west of the resort. No serious talks have moved forward on that idea.

Sessoms and Chaplain talk about their plan as a catalyst to stretch the resort area west along 17th Street, which city officials often call a gateway to the beach.

"This project would be the springboard of redevelopment for that whole area," Sessoms said. "It would create upscale users who want to be around and in the 17th Street corridor, the 19th Street corridor and the Birdneck Road corridor. Activity breeds activity."

One urban land planner isn't convinced.

Steve Wilson, senior associate for Sasaki Associates, said the city should focus on the redevelopment of the old Dome site and the 19th Street corridor before tackling 17th Street. He said remaking 19th Street and Laskin Road into "walkable, pedestrian districts... makes Virginia Beach even more of a destination."

"You have to pick your priority areas," Wilson said. "Early on, we have to be careful we don't do competing projects. We need to do one well."

Chaplain said Ocean Center wouldn't compete with city priorities. It would work to complement and feed off of the Convention Center.

He said the plan would not be abandoned if the light-rail line being built in Norfolk never spreads to the Beach.

"It wouldn't kill the deal," Chaplain said. "But it's more attractive with it."

Richard Quinn, (757) 222-5119, richard.quinn@pilotonline.com