THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 20, 1995 TAG: 9502200044
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Base Closings: The Final Round
What's at Stake for Hampton Roads?
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
Don't get Steve Vastartis started.
``If they close the gates at the shipyard here, there would be a depression,'' the Greek-born restaurant owner hollers, jetting cigarette smoke and brandishing a finger. ``Me? Bankruptcy. I'd close the door. Bad news. I would be bankruptcy. Close the door.''
Vastartis is coiled at a table in the rear of Steve's, the diner he has owned for eight years. Just outside, a couple dozen paces beyond the diner's yellow linoleum and within sight of its two identical framed photos of the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, looms Gate 10 of Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth.
Inside Gate 10 are the sailors, metal workers, electricians and pipe-fitters who each day pass Steve's and Slim's, the go-go bar across the street, on their way to and from work. Many stop in.
So many, in fact, that on federal holidays, Steve's and Slim's shut down. Close the yard for good, and these two businesses would be among the first civilian businesses clobbered by the decision.
``Not recession,'' Vastartis says, jabbing air. ``Depression.''
They would not be the last, however.
``A place like this is going to feel the most immediate impact,'' Jim Stafford says over a beer and the thump of early Madonna at Slim's, his sweater glowing cobalt under a black light. ``But it hits even you and me in the long run, you know?
``I probably live 15 miles from here, but real estate would be hit by a glut,'' the accountant and occasional customer says. ``This sort of thing affects everybody sooner or later. Some sooner, but everybody.''
Mary Johnson and Janet Taylor, dancers since Slim's went go-go in 1993, figure that 90 percent of the bar's customers work at the yard or aboard ships there.
``Sure, it would affect us,'' Johnson says of a closing. ``There'd be nobody here but us.''
``It'd be gone,'' Taylor agreed, her hot-pink minidress clashing with the orange blobs of light scattered by a disco ball overhead. ``The girls who don't have any other marketable skills, they'd be in big trouble.''
Not just dancers, either. Everybody would suffer. Slim's employs bartenders and doormen, Taylor noted. Another company provides the bar's juke box and video games. A beer distributor stands to lose money. So does the city and state, which collect taxes from Slim's earnings and real estate.
Save for Steve's and Slim's, the countryside around Gate 10 is scrubby plain, imbued with the bleak nothingness of a spaghetti Western. A closing would take no time to ripple across this urban desert, to businesses farther away but no less dependent on shipyard trade.
Each of these firms - whether a bar or work clothes outlet, an auto repair shop or toolmaker - has its array of subcontractors and suppliers. Without yard customers, entire networks of interdependent businesses would see their earnings dive. Layoffs might follow. Failures. Economic crisis.
Eddie's Bus Service Inc. is miles away in Chesapeake. Of the company's 35 buses, six are devoted each day to carrying 150 to 200 workers to and from the shipyard and homes throughout Hampton Roads.
``That would be six buses that wouldn't run,'' says Eddie Upton, who owns the company and has provided the service to the yard for 22 years. ``It's going to affect everybody. Anything to do with the Navy in this area affects everybody.''
Shipyard layoffs already have bitten into Upton's trade. Used to be, he says, that he had 38 buses ferrying shipyard workers each day.
Robert Horton's body and paint shop is way down in Bowers Hill. Just last week, though, he won a Navy contract to maintain 5,000 vehicles. He also tows illegally parked cars for two property owners just outside Gate 10.
``It would cost me big-time if they were to close. It would cost me about a million dollars,'' Horton says. ``Indirectly, it would hurt the rest of Portsmouth that hasn't already fallen in the river.
``It's a fact that the Tidewater area is dependent on a lot of people working in there.''
Faith is a common denominator among many folks relying on the yard. Back at Steve's, Vastartis sits with a friend, Frances Elrod, under a wood-and-yarn sailboat mounted on maroon velvet. A brass plate identifies the artwork as ``USS Steve.''
``I'm making my prayer that the gate, it will stay open,'' says Vastartis, whose son is a yard engineer. ``They're making people scared now, about the gates closing. It will be OK. Not much problem. No. No, maybe will get better, that's it. Not going to be bad.
``Close the gate? Never happen. Never. That's what I say will happen. Never happen. I say so.''
His friend laughs. ``What difference does that make?'' She has a son at the yard, too, a longtimer. ``Of course, they're scared,'' she says. ``And, of course, everybody there picks up rumors every day.''
Vastartis waves away the worry. ``No depression here. Gates are going to stay open,'' he announces. ``Next year, I think, it will get better. Don't listen to everybody talk.
``Lot of baloney.'' MEMO: Main story on page A1
ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JIM WALKER, Staff
``I'm making my prayer that the gate, it will stay open,'' says
restaurant owner Steve Vastartis. His business is so dependent on
shipyard employees that he closes up on federal holidays.
KEYWORDS: BASE CLOSING by CNB