THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 24, 1994 TAG: 9408240532
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
Houses in a third of the city may soon cost more to buy and add on to, but that's a small price to pay for a shot at keeping Oceana Naval Air Station open, the City Council decided Tuesday.
By a vote of 10-0, the council approved five measures designed to make sure development doesn't infringe on the base and to protect people living nearby.
The cost of construction in the area around Oceana and the Naval Auxiliary Landing Field Fentress, on the Chesapeake-Virginia Beach border, may increase because of additional soundproofing requirements. Buildings closest to the facilities will have the most stringent requirements.
Existing homes won't be affected, unless additions are built.
Many Navy bases picked for closing in the last round of cuts got the ax in part because surrounding development was hampering base activities, Lt. Cmdr. Bryan P. Murphy said. The council's action ``makes encroachment a nonissue'' in the discussion over whether to close Oceana, he said.
The base avoided closure last year by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, but it is on the list for consideration in the next round of cuts in 1995. Since Oceana's scrape with the commission, the council has reversed decades of policies favoring landowners over interests of the base.
The master jet base, home of fighter planes such as the F-14 Tomcat and attack bombers such as the A-6 Intruder, is the city's largest employer, with more than 10,000 people on its payroll.
The measures are changes to the zoning map, zoning ordinance, the subdivision ordinance, the site plan ordinance and the Airport Noise Attenuation and Safety provisions of the city code.
Most of the measures will go into effect by Jan. 1.
Anyone who sells a home within a ``noise zone'' will now be required to warn the buyer of the proximity of the base. About 30,000 homes fall into one of four noise zone categories in this fast-growing part of the city, according to Karen Lasley, operations coordinator for the city's Planning Department.
Real estate agents selling homes already notify prospective buyers of noise zones. The new requirement now includes homeowners who sell without a real estate agent.
Certain height and use restrictions also will apply in the area adjacent to the base to protect pilots and the public, Lasley said. Communications towers are the only structures tall enough to be affected by the height restrictions, she said. Land in ``crash zones'' on the flight path into the airfield will be prohibited from development for public uses such as churches, schools or shopping centers.
Most of the property owners in the area already have been compensated for their loss of development potential, Murphy said.
W.H. Shurtleff, commanding officer of the naval air station, said the new restrictions will protect the public from the airfield, ``as well as protecting the airfield's long-term viability.''
The changes are minor, Shurtleff said, mostly codifying measures already approved by the Federal Aviation Administration and allowed under state law.
The soundproofing requirements, while costly, will ensure that the base will not bother most city residents, he said.
No one opposed the measures at Tuesday's meeting. The Tidewater Builders Association and the Tidewater Association of Realtors, Inc., submitted letters supporting the move.
Ken Falkenstein, government-affairs coordinator for the realtors association, said his group, which helped draw up the new regulations, decided that ``anything that we didn't like was not nearly as bad as if Oceana had closed.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
License Plates OK'D The Virginia Beach City Council approved
the design Tuesday for a special license plate celebrating city
spirit and contributing to city coffers.
The plate, which is expected to cost $25 annually and bring the
city as much as $187,000 a year, still needs to be approved by the
Department of Motor Vehicles. Residents and other fans of Virginia
Beach would be able to purchase the plates for their vehicles.
For the first year, the money from the tags will go to the
Virginia Marine Science Museum for promotions and its Marine
Stranding Program. Council members said the money raised from the
plates may go to different city programs in succeeding years.
KEYWORDS: NOISE ORDINANCE REZONING
by CNB