THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604130121
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
The Resort Area Advisory Commission, the citizens' panel that dreams up big projects designed to boost city tourism, has decided to go for broke.
Commission members want to tell the City Council soon that all resort funding should be funneled into expanding the Pavilion Convention Center and to developing a commercial corridor from the center to the Oceanfront.
The acronym for this revised plan is CORE, which stands for Combined Oceanfront Renewal Enterprise.
Its estimated price tag, Commission Chairman Roger Newill told fellow members Thursday, would be $165 million. This is a considerable leap from the original $97 million Tourism Growth Investment Fund initiative the advisory commission created six years ago.
TGIF, funded by special hotel and restaurant taxes and fees, called for funding or partially funding two big projects now under construction: the $35-million Virginia Marine Science Museum expansion and the $17-million amphitheater.
These are nearly complete and it's now time to move on a third and equally important piece in the tourism development strategy, Newill told commission members. That piece, he said, is the Pavilion.
A vastly expanded convention center could attract major off-season business, political and civic gatherings that would keep resort hotel, restaurant and shop cash registers jingling year-round. This, in turn, would pump more tax money into the city's treasury and keep the real estate and property levels at moderate levels citywide.
Plans have been in the making to triple the size of the convention center, but funding was sidetracked a year or so ago when the City Council opted to reroute a big chunk of TGIF cash - now estimated at $35 million or more - to help fund the federally backed Hurricane Protection Plan. The plan is better known at the Oceanfront the ``Seawall project.''
The estimated cost of the Seawall project is $100 million and bids on its first phase will be let some time in June. Construction on the first eight blocks, from Rudee Inlet to 8th Street, should start in October.
Despite the refiguring of the TGIF money pot, Newill insists the city still can pursue the Pavilion expansion and corridor development. It would spur other resort commercial development in its path, attracting upscale businesses of all sorts, he said.
The CORE plan could be financed under existing TGIF methods in 15 years, Newill insists. The same special resort business taxes would be used to pay off the debt.
Existing TGIF plans, such as the beautification of the entire length of Pacific Avenue would have to be compressed to permit the funding of the more ambitious project, Newill said.
Newill and advisory commission members want to place their revised ``big picture'' game plan before the City Council as a starting point for public discussion.
Such discussions would be tempered by the race for three City Council seats in the May 7 election. Also weighing heavily in the future of CORE are council deliberations over a proposed $897.8 million municipal budget and the recommendation of a 3.2 percent real estate tax hike to balance it. by CNB