"New Urbanism" comes to Hampton Roads

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Hampton Roads: A Special Report
"New Urbanism" comes to Hampton Roads
Cars are out, pedestrians are in for concept pushing multi-use projects

by Garry Kranz

The way developer Bobby Freeman sees it, Hampton Roads suffers from no lack of cul-de-sac subdivisions filled with cookie-cutter houses. But there is a short supply of old-fashioned neighborhoods where homes stand within walking distance of stores, restaurants and offices. So, when he redevelops an old Eveready Battery Co. property in Newport News, he plans to erect houses, duplexes, condominiums, corner stores and office buildings in an urban blend not seen in these parts since World War II. His Port Warwick project borrows liberally from the Fan District in Richmond with its early 20th-century row houses intermingled with parks, shops and eateries. "I’m trying to create a Fan District for Newport News," Freeman says.

But Port Warwick will have distinctive elements as well. Clustered around a central town square — Styron Square, named for Newport News native and author William Styron — four-story buildings will have offices and shops on the ground level, apartments above and condos on top. By the time the project is built out in 10 years, it will include enough housing for 1,000 residents, 40,000 square feet of retail space, 250,000 square feet for medical offices and up to 60 "live/work" properties.

Freeman, 47, expects his privately funded venture to make money, of course. But he’s an evangelist for a larger, nobler vision. He hopes Port Warwick will serve as a model for a more efficient, more livable pattern of development in this sprawling metro area of 1.5 million people. "We have to sell more than just quality of life, good schools, and water and sewer," says Freeman. "Companies also want to know there is a quality housing stock for their employees."

Most redevelopment projects in Hampton Roads have been concentrated in older cities such as Norfolk, Portsmouth and Hampton. Outlying counties, by contrast, have grown with abandon, using their resources to keep up with developers leapfrogging from one vacant field to the next. But Freeman’s project is one of three major projects – one in the Pembroke area of Virginia Beach and another in Newport News’ Oyster Point — that involve the redevelopment of aging suburbs. These developments reflect a shift in philosophy among business and governmental leaders that it makes more sense to invest public and private resources in revitalization of existing neighborhoods than to push development to the metropolitan periphery.

Freeman and others in Hampton Roads take their cue from the New Urbanism movement. "The idea," says Steven Bodzin, a spokesman for Congress of the New Urbanism, a San Francisco-based public policy group, "is not only to reduce traffic congestion. New Urbanism projects also seek to enhance the sense of community by focusing development into neighborhoods." This school of urban design shuns the icons of post-World War II suburbia — freeways, strip malls, office parks and vast residential tracts — in favor of more traditional patterns that create a strong sense of place and encourage the oldest of transportation modalities — walking. It’s tragic, Freeman says, to devote large tracts of undeveloped urban land to a single purpose like housing or office. Nothing connects the buildings together. "There is no community among buildings in that type of development."

New Urbanism appeals to the new generation of business leadership. Old Economy companies housed all business functions under a single corporate roof. Largely self-sufficient, they could operate comfortably in isolated office parks. But small, fast-growing New Economy companies outsource many traditional corporate functions. Requiring more interaction with people on the outside, these companies prefer easier interaction — places resembling traditional central business districts (CBDs). Businesses today are clamoring to locate in upscale CBDs, says Burrell Saunders, chief executive officer of CMSS Architects in Virginia Beach, which is working on the Pembroke and Oyster Point projects. Many people "want to be able to take a client to lunch, go for a walk around the fountain, do some shopping, whatever … without ever having to get in their cars."

About a half-mile from Port Warwick, another commercial property is being reshaped according to New Urbanism principles. At the center of Oyster Point, a 700-acre business park in Newport News, 40 vacant acres surround a massive city-built fountain. A development group headed by local businessmen Harvey L. Lindsay, William Hudgins, Jr., Alan Witt, Joe Ritchie and Donald Patten wants to concentrate a bustling mixture of office parks, shops and restaurants, upscale apartments, and even a hotel on the open acreage. Patten and Witt are former members of Newport News City Councils, while Ritchie is a former mayor. The project, dubbed Oyster Point Town Center, is modeled after Reston Town Center in Northern Virginia, an icon of New Urbanism.

Located near the Virginia Peninsula’s major transportation arteries, Oyster Point diverges from the New Urbanism ideal by making concessions to the automobile. It plans, for instance, a concealed five-story parking deck. But it still nods to bygone eras of foot-friendly "Main Street" villages. "The idea is that once people [drive] here, they can go anywhere on foot," explains Paul Miller, the city’s planning director. Plans call for tucking future parking areas discreetly into the high-end office buildings planned for the project. In place of vast tracts of asphalt parking lots, the town center will feature long promenades, large common areas and a tiled half-circle around a lake restricted to pedestrians.

Phase one calls for construction of up to four office buildings, including an 80,000-square-foot facility that Newport News will lease for some government offices. Construction began in April on a 100,000-square-foot building known as Fountain Plaza 1. Five floors of offices will perch atop the parking deck, creating the equivalent of a 10-story building. All offices would be above the parking deck. Also slated in the first phase is an apartment complex with about 300 units.

Miller waxes nostalgic on the virtues of the proposed town center. By making it possible for people to gather and live in the same area where they work, Oyster Point could serve as a magnet for new development. "It really is a throwback on a pedestrian scale. It’s an attempt to recreate the villages of the past, when people on foot had time to pay attention to what was around them," says Miller. "We see it as a new downtown for the Peninsula."

Where Point Warwick emphasizes residential development leavened with business, Oyster Point Town Center maintains a commercial orientation. There is another big distinction between the two projects. Freeman used private investment to buy the Eveready property for nearly $6 million. By contrast, the City of Newport News is actively engaged in Oyster Point both as developer and customer. The city plans to float bonds to help build Oyster Point. The city expects to provide at least $16 million to construct a parking garage, roads and other infrastructure. The city also is expected to make lease payments of about $1.5 million for renting offices. Additional parking structures and roads also could be paid for by the city. Developers are picking up the remaining tab of the proposed project, which they say could run as high as $300 million.

The financial scope of the deal does have a few people worried. Some question whether projected tax revenue from Oyster Point will be sufficient to offset the city’s sizable financial investment. Doubts linger about the wisdom of mixing residential into a proposed downtown business core. Madeline McMillan, the lone member of Newport News City Council to oppose the project, is skeptical of the city’s estimates for financing the project. "Oyster Point is a highly desirable location to have a business, so much so that we shouldn’t need to subsidize a private developer," she contends.

Similar designs are taking place in one of the last major parcels of vacant property in Virginia Beach, a 14-block stretch in the Pembroke area that parallels Virginia Beach Boulevard east toward Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake-based developer, Armada Hoffler, hopes to transform the scattershot mix of housing and businesses into Virginia Beach Town Center, a blend of retail, office, entertainment, parks, public facilities and residences encompassing 2.5 million square feet. The initial $80 million investment covers two blocks, including a high-rise office building, a hotel tower and 100,000 square feet of retail space wrapped around a multi-deck parking facility. At 400 feet, the office building would eclipse by 20 feet Dominion Tower in Norfolk as the region’s tallest structure, according to the city’s Economic Develop-ment Director Don Maxwell.

Virginia Beach officials tout the comprehensive development as a "business park for 21st century jobs," and the city plans to float about $30 million in municipal bonds to help pay for public parking garages. The city will sink $11 million more into other infrastructure and land for a public plaza, bringing its share to more than $41 million, but will recoup the capital outlay by using tax increment financing districts to generate offsetting tax revenues on the expected $300 million in public and private investment. Using this "pay-as-you-go" strategy, Maxwell says, Virginia Beach will recover its investment from the increased assessed value of structures on the newly developed property.

The project also leverages the city’s investment in existing infrastructure. "What better way than to ‘re-densify’ traffic in the urban core, where the best roads generally are, and increase foot traffic with these lifestyle centers?" says Lou Haddad, Armada Hoffler’s president and CEO. Despite increased densities, Virginia Beach’s town center, like the one at Oyster Point, should actually alleviate traffic congestion, adds CMSS’ Burrell. "Putting several million square feet [of development in the town center] is much more cost effective than spreading it out, so you don’t spend as much on water and sewer. Plus we’re creating a round-the-clock environment. We won’t have to worry about peak-time usage of parking spaces. Or at least we’ll reduce it. Employees will use the parking garage while they’re at work during the day, and in the evening residents will use it to attend concerts, go shopping or see a movie."

As another benefit, Virginia Beach now offers an environment suitable for a Fortune 500 company to locate a regional headquarters, allowing the city to recruit a broader range of businesses. Town Center "gives us a different product to show to prospective clients," says Mark Wawner, project development manager for the city’s economic development department.

Getting the city center started has not been easy. Virginia Beach is a battleground where no-growth advocates have derailed several projects in recent years, including a bond referendum for building new schools — usually a slam-dunk in most communities. Previous efforts to steer growth away from the beachfront and toward a more traditional downtown have encountered resistance. Virginia Beach officials faced vociferous opposition when they unveiled their plan for Town Center. Complaining that developers were trying to sneak the project through without public comment, foes characterized the development as little more than an expensive boondoggle.

Business people counter that Virginia Beach no longer can afford to rely solely on seasonal industries like tourism, especially after a decade of military cutbacks precipitated an exodus of trained workers. Competition for technology companies, too, puts the onus on Virginia Beach to develop facilities that will serve as drawing cards for new business. Instead of retarding new development, the boosters say, "no-growthers" need to glimpse a vision of the city’s economic future.

Saunders of CMSS Architects admits his company is in the development game to make money. And he readily concedes that the vaunted New Urbanism, while in vogue, really isn’t new at all. It’s an old idea repackaged, a set of principles that proved their worth in the past. He voices a different reason why Virginia Beach Town Center, Oyster Point Town Center and similar projects should be built — a reason closer to home. "What I keep thinking about," he muses, "is where are our kids going to work when they get older? What kind of jobs will they find? What’s going to be here for them?"

The answer to those questions has yet to be found. Whether they emerge from these new developments won’t be known until many years — and millions of development dollars — later.

Return to Virginia Business - May 2001