The Virginian-Pilot
©
VIRGINIA BEACH
City leaders are thinking big – some will say dreaming – as they consider ideas to remake the Pembroke area over the next 50 years.
During a two-day brainstorming session, city officials, developers, architects and a handful of residents imagined the area could look something like this:
Town Center grows to the west, creating a dazzling skyline that hovers over a vibrant shops, office buildings and loft apartments. People walk, bike or hop on the sleek light rail train.
A big grassy park is filled with joggers, frisbee throwers and sports fans walking toward a coliseum to watch the city’s new NBA team. The Virginia Beach Neptunes was a suggestion.
Far-fetched?
It’s one vision for the Pembroke area, 1,500-acres loosely framed by a tic-tac-toe grid where Independence Blvd. and Witchduck Road, running north to south, intersect with Virginia Beach Blvd. and Interstate 264, running east to west.
The area is bisected by the Norfolk Southern rail line, which the city is hoping to buy for a mass transit corridor, possibly light rail.
“This is the bullseye,” said architect Burrell Saunders, who’s working with the city to create the “Pembroke Area Implementation Plan.” It’s one of 13 growth areas city officials have targeted for redevelopment. Plans for Burton Station and the Oceanfront have been completed.
Other ideas included redesigning Pembroke Mall, moving the city’s municipal center to Pembroke, creating an arts district, a big park, a greenbelt along Thalia Creek and remaking Virginia Beach Boulevard to give the area a sense of identity beyond suburban sprawl.
The existing neighborhoods in the area – Pocahontas Village and Columbus Station – are not part of the plan.
A light rail line is considered a crucial development tool for Pembroke. Previous plans call for four to five train stops in the area, including two around Town Center.
The plan is partially being designed to help attract light rail money. Federal agencies want to know that localities are thinking about how the land around the rail line would be developed before committing money, said Jayne Whitney, Hampton Roads Transit’s senior vice president for development.
“The fact that the city is looking at this will score some points,” she said. Councilman John Uhrin called the plan “critical” to getting light rail approval from the Federal Transit Authority.
The vision for Pembroke faces huge obstacles. Much of the land, which was developed in a classic suburban model, would have to be rezoned, especially to encourage mixed-use and high-density residential projects. Landowners would have to buy into the plan and redevelop their land or sell to developers or the city.
The city can only invoke eminent domain to acquire land for roads or city buildings. Unlike Norfolk, for example, Virginia Beach does not have a redevelopment authority with power to take private land for private projects.
Despite the challenges, city’s leaders hope Town Center will serve an example of what Saunders, the architect, called breaking “the glass ceiling of suburban codes.”
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Pocahontas Village
Did you not get the subtext here? Pocahontas Village (the houses, the people) are not part of the plan, but the land they sit on is. Get it, get it?--trumped up eminent domain seizure. If they can do it to Pocahontas Village, they can do it all along the Boulevard in either direction, coming for our houses next. And with our pro-development mayor, don't expect any sympathy when you have to leave your perfectly-kept-up home you've been in for 40 years either.
subsidies!
If anyone is against any subsidy for light rail, you must be equally against a subsidy for a interstate or highway. Infrastructure is the government's responsibility to fund. Whether is be an auto-centric form or mass transit. Even if you do not directly benefit, or if you choose not to ride...you gain indirect benefits from the absence of cars being on the road due to the light rail user. Unless you are going to be inconsistent in your advocating ideology, you must understand that mass transit riders have the same rights to infrastructure subsidies.
I'm not the one who has lost my mind here
The only public money in the SGA (besides LRT) would be for streets, sidwwalks, parks, etc. Hardly a taxpayer subsidy.
As for you claiming a lack of freedom, you're stuck on your paranoid notion that cars for residents would totally go. Not true. Matter of fact, a good portion of the Charrette was spent on figuring out how to handle parking for residents.
The bottom line: you and your VBTA dinosaurs live in a world that died at least a generation ago. Wake up and smell the 21st Century.
Freedom? Forceing suburban taxpayers to subsidize urban jungles?
Henry, have you totally lost your mind? Only in your world of wealth redistribution would anyone think that forcing suburban homeowners to fund your vision of urban development built around massive taxpayer funded transit as "freedom". Freedom would be HRT, the MPO, and state, and thge federal government) getting out of the way of the private sector investing their own capital to built a rail service that its users pay for. If the users of the service are not willing to pay the cost of the service they want, then the FREE market steps in and allows freedom to decide how business will turn a profit. If developers want to build a mini-New York City in Virginia Beach then do it with their own money, not tax dollars. Lastly, the false assertion that taxpayer subsidized TOD is going to benefit the taxpayers stuck picking up the tab for a LRT they can't use and do not need is laughable.
re: Reid
First of all, as you every well know, TOD only extends a quarter of a mile from the rail station. The vast majority of Virginia Beach would continue to be suburban/rural. If you want suburban living, buy a detached single family home outside the TOD zone.
It's hilarious that you VBTAers complain about assessment escalation, but don't get that TOD in the SGAs will cushion you from future increases. Simple Law of Supply and Demand: the more units that go on the market, the lower the price. If we stop growing as we run out of greenfields north of the Green Line, the dwindling supply of new units hitting the market would shoot housing prices through the roof.
For all your rhetoric about freedom, you don't get that YOU are the one taking away choice. Virginia Beach can - and will - be an urban/suburban/rural hybrid
true
Thats completely right, I only hope that Light Rail comes before the next oil crisis. The next time it won't just be for the summer, and it probably won't cap out at $4/gallon. No one is ever going to be forced by the city council to "park their cars," but you can bet that the Middle East will be able to do it. I remember when hearing people talk about gas going to $3/gallon as if it were a joke and "merely hypothetical." Talk to any economist and they will tell you that soon Americans will have to change their auto-centric lifestyle.
misimons
I hope you are right. My only point is that in Virginia Beach, a large segment of the '70s and '80s growth included people who rejected the urban model in favor of a "don't ask me to give up my car" attitude.
Once these people retire and either move away or are no longer able to drive themselves, Smart Growth concepts will hopefully flourish.
Pocahontas Village
I would like to know how they can say that Pocahontas Village is not part of the plan when it is dead center in their plan... Something is not right with that statement. Pocahontas Village is to the right of Euclid Road and is inside their dotted lines.
If we wanted to live in New York city we would have moved there.
The problem with "urban planners" is simply that they view all "solutions" through rose colored glasses having their lens colored by a "vision" of creating high density cities and they simply dismiss the wonderful blessings of suburban living and the outstanding quality of life and freedom we enjoy because of our personal control over our own transportation. We decide how much comfort we wish to pay for when we travel, when we leave, where we go, and with whom we travel. We are far less likely to be robbed in our subsurban drive way then we would be on a light rail platform in a "urban planners" future urban jungle. You don't read about terrorists blowing up a lone car on the highway too often, but buses and trains are a favorite target. When I hop into my car I didn't have to stand outside in the freezing rain for 20 minutes waiting for an HRT bus that was late once again. My car is available 24/7 365. Buses and mass transit are not.
SQUIRRLY
The problem for folks like squirrly is a philosophical one. Its about foresight. National trends show that populations are rising in cities. Transit oriented development is the direction for growth in the post-petroleum age. Smart-growth is the polar opposite of the outdated model of "SPRAWL, SPRAWL AND MORE SPRAWL." Yes we WILL slso fix our roads(Midtown tunnel expansion, 3rd crossing, new Jordan bridge, Constitution drive extention). But Smart-growth is comprehensive and includes alternate methods of transportation and rezoning with pedestrian/bike friendly development in mind. Its perfectly OK if you do not wish to move and ride light rail. I know you don't think it will work. But the planners who have masters degrees in this stuff do. I also am studying urban planning/urban economics and everyone in my classes, professor included, agrees in the viability of Light Rail and the TOD to come.