THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 19, 1996 TAG: 9602170222
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
It is congested parking lots and slow freight trucks, the battered fingers of ship piers, the tang of fuel oil, the smell of sea vegetation at low tide.
It's Decatur Avenue, about as anonymous a street as you'll find in Tidewater, though it'll be on the tourist routes soon. The U.S. Navy will put it there.
Decatur offers one of the world's unique views. Stand in the street, an industrial artery running alongside the Elizabeth River at Sewells Point in Norfolk, and you must tilt your head back to see the end of the flight decks. You are that close to the piers and the 91,000-ton aircraft carriers.
Will the view bring in tourists? We'll soon find out.
Ever since Norfolk Naval Base in November opened its gates wide to the taxpayers and, for that matter, everyone else, the Navy has moved ahead with plans to develop the base's vast potential for tourism and new industry.
``We've always been here on the end of the peninsula behind the fence line,'' said Rear Adm. Robert S. Cole, the base commander. ``Now the fence line is coming down.''
Bob Cole says it like this. Five cities make up the southside, while the Navy, with 96,000 personnel, is as big as a city. So he's the sixth mayor. And like most mayors, he has problems.
He has a huge base - the Navy fills about a quarter of Norfolk - and expensive maintenance. He also has a shrunken budget with no relief in sight from Washington. And more units are bound for Norfolk as the Navy closes bases nationwide and consolidates.
In fact, so much is coming in, he said the new units require 2 million more square feet of office space than the base can provide.
Cole, a former A-4E pilot who commanded the carrier Forrestal, became base commander last summer after serving as chief of staff for the task force coordinating U.S. military efforts in what was Yugoslavia. Like most commanders, he's solutions oriented.
He visited the southside mayors. Ideas began to click. Virginia could build a tourist welcome center at Sewells Point. Maybe Portsmouth could land tour boats at the base. Maybe Nauticus, the maritime museum in Norfolk, could bus in tourists.
Bring in 500,000 visitors a year, sell each a $6 Navy baseball cap, lease space to waterside restaurants, lease more space to a hotel developer - well, the dollars add up. They add up in the millions.
Now plans are afoot for a Decatur green belt along the carrier piers and a parkway along the shore of Hampton Roads. What's more, the Navy plans to tear down at least a dozen old buildings, move a helicopter facility from the shore, and dismantle the steam heat system and replace it with individual plants for each building.
The blueprint for all this is ``2010,'' a plan inherited by Cole and envisioned by Adm. William J. Flanagan, the Atlantic Fleet commander in Norfolk. An admiral who thinks like a businessman, Flanagan looked for alternative revenue streams for the Navy.
Although much of Norfolk has been developed, especially the waterfront, the base contains vast stretches of empty land, much of it with superb views of the vessels crossing Hampton Roads. Plan 2010 would lease out big tracts.
If that happens, the Navy could become an industrial engine for the region's economy, especially Norfolk's, in the next decade.
``The city of Norfolk is 95 percent developed,'' Cole said. ``There's nowhere for Norfolk to go.''
Except North, onto the base.
Developers have been asked to consider building a fancy restaurant near Sewells Point. And plans are in the works to privatize Navy housing, expand the marina, perhaps bring in a boat hardware store, and attract a mid-scale restaurant near the base theaters.
In what could become one of the largest sources of lease revenue, the Navy has asked major corporations to submit plans for a hotel and marina overlooking Willoughby Bay's eastern shore near the Interstate 64 bridge.
The big site, an empty area made of dredge spoils from the carrier piers, also could even contain an arena for a professional sports franchise.
The big revenue producer, though, might be industry. Putting factories and offices on leased buildings and land on the base could generate income for the Navy and provide a huge boon for Norfolk's tax base.
It can't happen overnight. For one thing, it requires legislation. But Cole said he's committed to implementing 2010.
``Rather than sit here on all this potential and do nothing, the idea is to change the laws to let it happen,'' Cole said. by CNB