THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 9, 1996 TAG: 9610080147
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL REED, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 61 lines
Wrecking crews last week tore down the pink Traymore Motel that stood at Atlantic Avenue and 8th Street for more than 40 years to make room for a three-story parking garage, which will be open to the public.
Construction of the garage is under way and should be completed by early or mid-April.
Last April the City Council approved plans for a private developer to build the $7.2 million structure, then lease it back to the city for daily public use.
In the first step in the process, the council OK'd the closure of 8th Street, between Atlantic and Pacific avenues. The council then approved a 20-year agreement with the developer - Ellis-Gibson Development Co. - that will allow the city to use the top two floors to park 610 vehicles.
Terms of the lease call for the city to pay out $16 million over a 20-year period and keep any and all of the parking proceeds.
Doug Ellis, a principal in the Ellis-Gibson Development Co. - part of a local investment group - said the parking garage would occupy the block between 8th and 9th streets.
The ground floor would be turned over to resort hotelier Vern Burlage, who owns the tract and who is expected to lease 10,000 square feet of Atlantic Avenue frontage for retail use. He would retain 225 ground-level parking spaces for use in connection with his Oceanfront businesses.
Closure of 8th Street would provide Burlage with additional parking spaces that would be lost to him through the garage construction.
The development would provide the city with its first municipal, multilevel parking structure at the Oceanfront.
It would offer visitors an alternative to a hodgepodge of metered on-street parking and private and municipal lots stretching three miles from Rudee Inlet to 42nd Street. These spaces come at a premium from May through September, the height of tourist season, but are readily available during the winter and early spring months of the year.
The city already operates four ground-level municipal lots at 4th, 19th and 25th streets during the summer and early fall. A fifth lot at 31st Street is now being leased by Starship Ice, an ice skating rink franchise with headquarters in Richmond. That lease will expire next spring and the city may place the tract back in its oceanfront parking inventory until a more suitable use can be found.
The 8th Street project comes at a time when the recently concluded Pacific Avenue Corridor Study recommends dressing up Pacific Avenue, slowing down traffic and encouraging visitors to park their cars and either ride Oceanfront trolleys or walk to resort strip destinations of their choice.
The development company has made an effort to fit the parking garage into the beautification plans by hiring Burrell Saunders, of the CMSS architectural firm of Virginia Beach, to design and landscape it. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by CHARLIE MEADS
ABOVE: Rubble was removed last week of what was once the 40-year-old
Traymore Motel at 8th Street and Atlantic Avenue.
LEFT: A drawing of the public/private parking garage being built by
Ellis-Gibson Development Co. by CNB