THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605180132
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The Virginia Beach Hotel and Motel Association is backing plans to revitalize Pacific Avenue and wants the city to proceed with a five-block demonstration project to show the public how it will look.
The association, representing about 85 of the city's 155 hotels and motels, voted unanimously Thursday to endorse both the plan and the demonstration project.
In February, a city-hired consultant called for revamping Pacific Avenue and the major arteries leading into it. The estimated cost of giving the three-mile-long resort street a face lift would vary from $48 million to $68 million.
The consultant, Langley and McDonald of Virginia Beach, offered a vision of a narrower, slower paced street free of overhead wires and bordered by shade trees, shrubs and beachy sculptures.
The improvements would fit in with $45 million in improvements made on Atlantic Avenue during the past 10 years.
On Thursday, association president Henry Richardson, who owns a motel on Pacific Avenue, said innkeepers want the city to proceed with a ``demonstration'' project from 9th Street south to the Rudee Inlet Bridge.
``We are asking for funds in the CIP (Capital Improvement Program) - $1.5 million - for the demonstration project on the south end of Pacific Avenue and support the revitalization project,'' he said.
The demonstration project would parallel similar efforts in the mid-1980s to improve the first five blocks of Atlantic Avenue, from 25th to 21st streets. The work convinced city political and business leaders to move ahead with renovating the entire length of Atlantic Avenue.
The last phase of the project, the realignment of Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Avenue at 41st Street, is now nearing completion.
City planners decided to move ahead with Pacific Avenue beautification and commissioned Langley and McDonald to do a detailed study of the street, which is bordered by hotels, restaurants, shops and offices - most tourist related.
Funding for the entire project has yet to be approved by the City Council. Plans have been viewed by local lobbying and merchants' groups and must wend their way through the city's bureaucracy before reaching the council and final action.
A coalition of Laskin Road merchants wants changes in the Langley and McDonald plan, which recommends banning on-street parking at a commercial core near the Pacific Avenue-Laskin Road intersection. And a group of resort planners and business leaders say the expansion of the Pavilion Convention Center on 19th Street should come before Pacific Avenue improvements.
Just how these opinions affect the overall Pacific Avenue plans will be determined in the next year as they move closer to City Council scrutiny. by CNB