Breaking with Norfolk council, 3 seek public input

NORFOLK

Dissatisfied that a City Council debate on a subsidy for the proposed Midtown Office Tower was held behind closed doors, three council members say they will host a town hall meeting on Saturday to give residents a chance to voice opinions.

Council members Tommy Smigiel, Angelia Williams and Andy Protogyrou said they're holding the meeting because the council will vote on the issue Tuesday afternoon, when many residents are at work, and because the council has not debated the issue publicly.

All three oppose the $32.7 million project, an office building that would be built at Tidewater Drive and Virginia Beach Boulevard.

"We haven't heard from the public, and we need to hear from them - good, bad or indifferent," Williams said.

The council discussed the issue for 70 minutes in closed session Tuesday night. The closed session ran late, so a scheduled public session was not held.

Mayor Paul Fraim, Vice Mayor Anthony L. Burfoot, and council members Paul R. Riddick and Barclay C. Winn support the project and say it would jump-start development in a low-income neighborhood. Councilwoman Theresa Whibley said Tuesday night that she is undecided.

Burfoot said he did not know about the town hall meeting and criticized the three council members, all elected in May, for going outside the council's established system for considering development projects.

" I believe in the process and in the success we've had with our process," he said.

"If I was going to have a town hall meeting, I would at least discuss with the entire council that I want to do this, and this is why I want to do it."

The city has already signed two agreements with developer Tivest Development. When Tivest could not obtain financing to build the project last year, it asked the city to lease 60,000 square feet of office space for its human services department. The city agreed.

Then, in December, Tivest requested a third agreement, one that called for the city to lease up to 65,000 square feet of space if the primary tenant defaults. The Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project, a private anti-poverty agency, would lease 100,000 square feet of office space.

The council has yet to agree to that request and will vote on it Tuesday.

Director of Development Rod Woolard said the chances of STOP defaulting are min uscule. He also said the developer has agreed to allow the city to purchase the office space it rents.

Williams said the deal-breaker for her is that the city would pay an additional $400,000 a year in rent over what it is paying now to house human services when the new building opened.

"It's too much of a subsidy when we have employees who haven't had raises in years and we're facing a huge budget shortfall," she said.

Tuesday's closed-door meeting did not violate the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

City Attorney Bernard A. Pishko defended the closed session. "We were in there for clearly permissible reasons," he said.

Smigiel and Protogyrou, however, said much of the conversation was a political debate that could have been held in public.

Harry Minium, (757) 446-2371, harry.minium@pilotonline.com