Panel's plan for Waterside finds skeptics after grocer closes

NORFOLK

Almost a year and a half after a developer approached the city offering to run Waterside and turn the struggling facility into a public market, a panel of experts has recommended a similar plan.

In a report to City Council, the panel last week suggested turning the city-owned waterfront complex over to a private developer and using its first floor for a market, with the second floor and other areas serving as a banquet hall, restaurants and nightclubs.

"It's interesting to see that independently, someone has come up with the same direction for the building," said Michael Divaris, president of Divaris Real Estate, which suggested a similar plan in 2009.

But even as experts have recommended selling local fish, vegetables and produce out of the building, Divaris and others have started to wonder whether that is the right move.

The closing of Farm Fresh's Market at Harbor Heights over the past weekend signals that the customer base for a downtown grocery might not exist.

"The problem with Waterside is it's cut off from the people," said Bev Sell, general manager of Five Points Community Farm Market on Church Street. "You need to be in a community for a farm market. That message is hammered home with Farm Fresh.

"No one is going to go pay for parking to buy produce."

Divaris said he was disappointed to see the Farm Fresh fail, given his company's idea for a public market at Waterside. He added that the idea might need to be rethought.

"One does need to do a little homework to make sure there is the demand for this type of facility," Divaris said. "One questions the concept when you see there wasn't enough public support for a high-end grocer downtown."

Waterside, nearly 30 years old, is now more than half empty. Several nightclubs and restaurants have closed or moved away in recent years, and sales are down. To tackle the question of the building's future, the city surveyed residents and this fall hired five urban planning experts to study the building.

Some community groups, including the Downtown Norfolk Council, have pushed for demolishing Waterside to make way for new development. But the experts decided that tearing down Waterside would "remove a community icon... and create an aura of uncertainty about the future of the waterfront."

Instead, they recommended a private developer take over the facility and create a public produce and dry goods market similar to Seattle's Pike Place Market or Baltimore's Lexington Market.

Downtown Norfolk Council Chairwoman Donna Phaneuf said turning the facility over to private developers would be "a shift in the right direction" toward recreating Waterside as a thriving economic engine.

But Sell said one problem with the experts' plan was that the public markets they pointed to are more than 100 years old, with an established history and place in the downtown community. Creating a market from scratch, she said, would be difficult at best.

"I think everybody has this fantasy about a cute little farm market," she said. "But farm markets are not money makers - they're community-builders. You need to be in the thick of things."

Vice Mayor Anthony L. Burfoot has suggested temporarily moving the city's human services department into the second floor of Waterside once the lease on its privately owned building runs out in August.

The move, Burfoot said, would bring a stable base of people to Waterside each day, and the rent savings would provide the city with cash to help finance renovations to the building.

"Anybody who's looking to go into that building long term wants to know: Will people come?" Burfoot said. "Three hundred people for a lunch crowd would be a tremendous boost to businesses there."

Councilman Barclay C. Winn said the proposal is one the council needs to consider but that he'd like to hold off on serious discussions until the new city manager, Marcus Jones, starts in February.

Meghan Hoyer, (757) 446-2293, meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com