Looks aren't everything at the district near ODU

IN AN AREA of warehouses and industrial complexes, of chain-link fences lined with barbed wire, of lots stashed with beat-up cars, The District is immediately distinct.

It is four stories tall with an ivory-colored and brick exterior topped with decorative turrets. The new, barely off-campus residence hall for Old Dominion students could pass for innovative or bold or - at worst - not-so-bad. Two summers ago, I passed the construction site on my drive to work nearly every day. The outside was fine, the kind of new building you would expect to see around a college campus.

But it was the District's interior that had all the goods. On its website and in brochures, The District looked like the set of a television drama, nothing like the dingy walls, clumped carpeting and cheap construction I lived in during college, with hand-me-down furniture and rickety stairs and a constant smell of mold.

This structure was no ordinary dorm. It had glamour.

A glimmering pool - complete with a water basketball hoop. Tanning beds - not one, but two. Billiard tables. Gorgeous kitchens with stainless steel appliances. Even through the photos, you could smell the place, and it smelled new.

The rooms were staged with modern decor right out of a Pottery Barn catalog, or at least upscale Tar-jay. This was luxurious college living, a modern-day Melrose Place.

At first, I was jealous. I live in a two-income household. I viewed the rooms at The District as living quarters that were, in some ways, nicer than my own and by all accounts drastically nicer than my own college digs.

But personal pettiness aside, I saw The District as a place that set up unreasonable expectations for college students, particularly in an economy that required tens of thousands of dollars in loans before graduation and a shaky job market afterward. The District's spa-like allure felt disconnected from the real world, egregiously out of touch with the blighted neighborhood around it.

I wondered if the lease came with a disclaimer: "Tenants shall live it up and then shall spend the rest of their lives regretting they never again lived in a place as nice as the one that housed them when they were 22."

But a recent investigation by the Norfolk bar task force, already concerned about public safety in the area, showed a different version of The District's interior. Lax security. Inoperable fire alarms. Regular false alarms. Hard-to-find guards. The report cited a "serious public safety issue" and "perceived nonchalance" concerning security.

The District's new managers, who have only recently taken control of the building, have said the issues are corrected.

Great, although none of these oversights is particularly surprising or offensive. These problems exist at college dorms across the country, but the District always seemed to aspire to be more than an average college dwelling. It had higher expectations, because if you wanted average, you could live in the dorms.

I remembered the decisions my friends and I had to make when we first moved off campus, the same type of choices we were forced to make right out of college and the kind that continue, oh, every day of your adult life.

You can have car insurance or you can go out for dinner every night. You can live farther from campus or you can live in the newest apartment complex. You can buy a new sweater or you can put food in the refrigerator.

You can have glitz over substance, amenities before necessities, but there is a consequence. Life is a trade-off, full of either/ors.

I wasn't so much bothered by the city's report as much as I was relieved to learn that the truism applied at The District, too. For most of adult life, you choose some, but not all, of the amenities. Security? Tanning beds? Attentive staff? Pool?

Last week, I drove past The District on my way to work and looked at the building differently. Perhaps it wasn't some fairy-tale castle that residents would remember all their lives. Instead it was part of the real world.

In fairy tales, the trade-offs always appear much clearer.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss