DATE: Wednesday, September 3, 1997          TAG: 9709030020

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: BY JAN ELIASSEN 

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

HOLD THE LINE: MORE SPRAWL IS NOT WORTH SUPPORTING

The editorial ``A new era'' was a case of an editorial writer buying a song and dance. The strangely persistent notion that the cure for the ills of sprawl is more sprawl is an absurd piece of nonsense nurtured by a small handful of developers and landowners, and not by an editorial writer at The Virginian-Pilot.

Population growth is not the same as the growth of our economic vitality. Getting bigger will not solve our problems. It will only leave us with new neighborhoods at our far edges and potholes and crumbling schools in our older neighborhoods.

The compelling reason for holding the Green Line is not to preserve the rural south; it is to allow us to reinvest in the suburban northern part of our city. As long as we are ambiguous about our commitment to holding the Line, developers will persist in looking for loopholes for developing cheaper land at the edges. What we want them to do is be convinced of our commitment and focus their much-needed money and skills on voluntarily redeveloping deteriorating areas where we already have infrastructure in place.

Light rail has great potential to stimulate the redevelopment, but light rail will never be able to deliver on its potential if we allow sprawl to continue at the edges.

Holding the Line is about Virginia Beach investing tax dollars in the very same neighborhoods where the people who pay the taxes live. That includes investing in open space as an important amenity.

There is still much land available for more of the very low density favored by many. Virginia Beach is the 17th largest city in America, but we rank all the way down at 69th in population per square mile (1,680). And if light rail develops greater density along our east-west transportation corridor, that will reduce north-south traffic, taking traffic away from existing neighborhoods.

Another part of the editorial absurdity is the notion that the Agricultural Reserve Program is compatible with development. It is not. The ARP is funded with taxpayers' dollars with the understanding that the result will be a much greater saving by not having to build new schools and roads to support sprawl. The ARP is a tool to help taxpayers get a more solvent city, one that lives within its means. It would be the height of deceit to tax our citizens for the ARP and then tax them again to support the sprawl they were promised the ARP would avoid.

Yes, retirement communities and recreation amenities ought to go into the transitional zones (below the Green Line but above the southern boundary along Indian River Road), and those developments may need some residential accompaniment, but token amenities for the sake of justifying more sprawl is counterproductive.

City Council ought to control this threat by reinstating the city staff's recommendation that we limit the transition zones to no more than one unit per acre of developed land. That recommendation came as a result of traffic engineers pointing out that anything more would overload existing roads and create needs for unplanned road projects.

Right now, Virginia Beach's Capital Improvements Plan, is laid out for years to come with plans to improve the infrastructure north of the Line. If we create a demand for new, extended infrastructure, we will have to fund it by deciding which established neighborhood will have to do without. There are limits to our budget, and as we age, more and more of our funds must go toward maintaining and improving our city, not overextending it.

Voting for sprawl is voting for unnecessary tax increases.

If we follow the absurd ideas expressed in the editorial (warmed- over conventional wisdom from the 1970s), we will assure ourselves of mediocrity.

What we want is for our existing infrastructure to be improved to the point where every property owner is willing and eager to reinvest. That reinvestment will spur the building industry, raise property values and our tax base and give us a chance for something better than mediocrity.

But to reach that better future, we must hold the Line.

MEMO: Jan Eliassen is a member of the Virginia Beach Planning

Commission. KEYWORDS: ANOTHER VIEW

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