THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509300140
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Traffic and parking were on the minds of more than 20 people attending a public hearing Thursday on the planning for a Pacific Avenue face lift.
Basically, two schools of thought on the issue emerged from two hours of discussion.
One side wanted to reduce auto traffic on the street and transform it into a pedestrian-friendly environment, with landscaping, crosswalks, new street lighting and buried underground electrical and telephone lines.
The other side sought to clear away obstacles by adding left and right turn lanes and allowing an unrestricted flow of north and south traffic from 42nd Street to Rudee Inlet.
All sides agreed that parking is a problem during peak summer months but differed on ways to resolve the dilemma. One solution offered: Build city parking garages at strategic Oceanfront points, link them to a reliable mass transit system that could haul tourists to any point in the resort strip. Another was to allow development of more private lots to accommodate summer parking overflows.
The discussion evolved after business operators and residents bordering Pacific Avenue gathered at the Pavilion Convention Center Thursday afternoon. The session was called by the city, which is planning some sort of Pacific Avenue improvements, and Langley and McDonald, a local consulting firm hired to study how improvements should be made.
Public input was sought before both the city and the consulting engineers moved into actual planning for improvements, said Clayton E. Massey, a senior associate with Langley and McDonald.
The firm is in the process of completing a traffic study of Pacific Avenue, said Massey, and the results would be folded into a master plan, as would public input. A second hearing on the issue will be held some time in November, he said.
From that point, the plan would go through the Planning Commission and on to the City Council in December. The plan would get a public airing at each step along the way.
Planners must take several other factors into consideration, said Massey. One is a major city-sponsored study on Oceanfront parking that is about to get under way.
The second is a major commercial development in the works for a 12-acre site two blocks west of Pacific Avenue - on Baltic Avenue at Laskin Road. The third is a major Laskin Road widening project - from Great Neck Road to Pacific Avenue - that the Virginia Department of Transportation is about to launch.
The city wants to start upgrading Pacific Avenue in basically the same way it has changed Atlantic Avenue in the last 10 years. That project - the Atlantic-Avenue ``streetscape'' - will end next May with the completion of a four-block segment from 39th through 42nd streets.
This involves the reconfiguration of the merger of Atlantic and Pacific avenues at 42nd Street. The streets now converge in front the old Cavalier Hotel and plans call for the area to be bulldozed and elaborately landscaped to form a welcoming northern gateway to the resort district.
It is all being done to stimulate tourism. The project is included in a $93-million Tourism Growth Investment Fund initiative approved by the City Council in 1991. That initiative also calls for the construction of a 20,000-seat amphitheater, expansion of the Virginia Marine Science Museum and the Pavilion Convention Center, construction of several professional quality golf courses and the revitalization of the Boardwalk. The amphitheater and marine science museum project are now in progress. ILLUSTRATION: Staff file photo by MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN
The intersection of Pacific Avenue and 21st Street is part of the
area to be upgraded.
The map shows the area in the redesign plan, and parking is one
problem to be resolved. Solutions offered at Thursday's public
hearing ranged from city parking garages to more private lots.
by CNB