THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608020223
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 154 lines
CAN VIRGINIA BEACH become the glamor capital of golfing on the East Coast?
That's what a band of city officials, interested citizens and entrepreneurs are hoping these days as they hammer out plans for five or six luxurious new links.
There's enough vacant land here to accommodate them, the planners insist, and once on line these courses would:
Bolster the city's tourism business during the ``shoulder season'' - generally October through April - when resort hotels and restaurants are dormant.
Establish Virginia Beach as an East Coast golf mecca rivaling Myrtle Beach, S.C., or Williamsburg.
A 12-member golf committee appointed several months ago by City Manager James K. Spore is shaping up a list of recommendations that call for:
Establishing a three-tiered plan that would result in at least four new Virginia Beach golf courses in the next year or two.
Building one or two ``signature'' courses around a major resort hotel on the city-owned 1,200-acre Lake Ridge property, along Princess Anne Road and Landstown Road.
Refurbishing and expanding Red Wing golf course and developing the city-owned West Neck tract as middle-tier courses to complement the Hell's Point course near Sandbridge and one yet to be built at Fort Story by the Army.
Upgrading or maintaining Bow Creek, Kempsville, Honey Bee and Cypress Point courses for largely local duffers.
The report will be forwarded to the Lake Ridge steering committee, which has the task of sifting through nearly a dozen proposed uses for the Lake Ridge tract. Eventually, a combined strategy would be offered to the City Council, which has the final say on the fate of the Lake Ridge property.
Golf course development plays a big part in the city's long-range tourism and economic development strategy, which was adopted by the City Council in recent years. Its aim is to spur business and tax revenues by extending tourism beyond the traditional summer season. Golf course development is part of a 10-year, $93 million Tourism Growth Investment Fund initiative, which includes the $35 million expansion of the Virginia Marine Science Museum and a proposed expansion of the Pavilion Convention Center.
While the city is moving ahead deliberately with its golf course strategy, the Army is about to launch its own development offensive. It plans to build a championship-caliber course along the ocean at Fort Story by 1999.
The course, which would have at least three beachfront holes, would be open year-round to both military and civilian golfers.
Both the Army and the city have long eyed golf - centered around ``signature'' courses designed by well-known pros like Hale Irwin or Jack Nicklaus - as an economic tool to advance troop morale and to broaden the local tourism base.
The Fort Story initiative began in 1991, said Bill Franssen, civilian director of the Army's personnel and community activities office at Fort Eustis. Franssen helped draft a ``Request for Interest'' from private developers a year ago.
Since then, Franssen's office has received 14 inquiries from potential builders. The Army is reviewing the responses and issuing a ``Request for Proposals.'' This is the third step in a lengthy process that defines what the Army wants in the way of a golf course.
It's aimed at narrowing the field to serious bidders, who then would have to specify what kind of course they would build and what kind of a clubhouse, practice range or other amenities would be built with it.
Franssen said bids would be opened within four to six months, and ground would be broken within a year. Construction would take another 18 months to two years.
About 250 acres of the 1,450-acre base, which overlooks the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, is available for the golf course, said Lt. Col. Fred Barrell, base commander.
Golf development plans for the base were made with four goals in mind, Barrell said. ``One, we want golf for the military community; we want golf for the military community at large and golf for the public.
``Two, we want to develop revenues that come back into the MWR (morale, welfare and recreation) accounts, because golf is basically the No. 1 (recreational) activity on military bases.''
The third goal, Barrell said, is to complement the city's golf development plans, and the fourth is to produce a course that doesn't have an impact on the delicate environment near the Fort Story shoreline.
To that end, Army planners have made available a stretch of tree-covered high ground running nearly two miles through the middle of the base and tapering off near the east gate. As envisioned by Franssen, the bulk of the course would be built over the top of a series of World War II-era underground bunkers and cover most of two public parking lots near the east gate.
Franssen and Barrell insist that the course would be a ``public-private'' project, with no public funds involved. The selected developer would finance the construction, build the course and pay the Army an annual fee for operating it. The city would reap sales taxes from greens fees, pro-shop sales and other fees associated with a golf-course operation.
Barrell estimates the Army MRW fund would get about $700,000 a year.
The city is aware of the project, which is advancing with city leaders' blessings.
On June 3, the city received six responses to a Request for Interest sent to would-be golf developers throughout the country. The document outlined general plans for developing several ``quality'' golf courses on the city-owned Lake Ridge property, 1.5 miles north and west of the Municipal Center.
The golf-development move arose from a city-financed study released in January, which recommended the construction of five new top-of-the-line public courses.
The demand exists, both within the city, region, state and its traditional Midwestern and Eastern Seaboard marketing areas, where duffers with varying talents and bank accounts abound, the study concluded.
All five courses operating at once would generate about $23.9 million a year. This, in turn, would create $1.8 million in sales and amusements taxes for Virginia Beach.
At the recommendation of the study, two committees were formed to look into potential uses for the Lake Ridge property. One, was to explore possible recreational uses, including golfing.
A second committee, made up of 12 members who had been on an assortment of earlier city golf committees, was to decide how best to develop top of the line courses on the Lake Ridge property and areas north of Indian River Road.
Both panels are winding up their missions and plan to pass their findings on to the City Council sometime this month. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover, Color photo]
SETTING A NEW COURSE
Staff photo by CHARLIE MEADS
A lone golfer drives the ball down a fairway at the Hell's Point
Golf Course near Sandbridge.
Franssen, civilian director of personnel and community activities
office at Fort Story is overseeing turning about 250 acres of the
1,450-acre base, which overlooks the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and
the Atlantic Ocean into a golf course. Franssen said bids on the
project would be opened within four to six months, and ground would
be broken within a year. Construction would take another 18 months
to two years.
Staff photo by
DAVID B. HOLLINGSWORTH
Planning for a golf course on 250 acres at Fort Story that overlook
the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean is being done
with four goals in mind, say base officials:
To provide recreation for the military community,
To provide revenues for the base's MWR (morale, welfare and
recreation) accounts,
Complement the city's golf development plans; and
Provide a design that won't have a detrimental impact on the
delicate environment near the shoreline.
Staff photo by
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT
MAP
SOURCE: U.S. ARMY
The Virginian-Pilot
KEYWORDS: GOLF COURSE by CNB