jbhay

I feel your pain, sir.

would regionalization make funding easier for hampton roads as a whole, so that visions like mass transit may be achieved quicker? this may need to be seriously looked at more and more. i know we've all talked it to death on here from time to time. i'm partly with ronsmythe on chesapeake having too much low density, yes Greenbrier is its stronghold, and yes it would be amazing to have a fixed mass transit line running all through the area, like its own unique system even, we all have great dreams of this sort of stuff from time to time. however, i'm also partly with varider in that i want to see mass transit everywhere. the city is so young and it can start the ball rolling now, or like virginia_pe said, wait like VA beach when it will be much more difficult (even tho va beach deserves more mass transit options than cpeake asap) i dont know where the landscape of chesapeake is headed, but every time i come home, there is another patch of forest being cut down to make way for some stupid suburban development that ultimately adds to the problem. greenbrier will not be so green in the years to come and the voting comment from city councilwoman debbie ritter make it that much more obvious

Quoted for truth. In related news, I get an ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) SmartBrief everyday in my e-mail about significant engineering projects in the country/world, policy updates, etc etc. Usually these articles are related to cities elsewhere, but today I got a surprise: "Norfolk, Va light-rail costs surge 46%". Dismal for sure, but at least Norfolk is getting recognition? Shucet clearly seems to have brought some worthy leadership experience to the project, let alone HRT. 38% remains for one year and two months. It seems he wants to take his time and make sure this project gets off on the right track, which I think is great news.

From the first paragraph of this, he sounds legit! Looking forward to his ideas. Inside Biz - Phil Shucet

Are you suggesting that the Scope be demolished in the future? I can understand the age and its modest capacity, but I always feel indifferent about cities that decide to remove such landmark structures. Norfolk has already erased much of its history during the urban renewal years and I would hate to have a Scope-less city on visits to the city later in life. There is so much more to be done in Downtown Norfolk and I agree with your opinion on a new mayor with better vision; Fraim is a great guy, but Norfolk needs a smart, young, and above all, an experienced mayor to lead the way towards future economic progress. Sadly, the leadership all around this country is rarely on track with investing in America's future and that's what Norfolk needs. Enough of that, here's the designer of the Scope for those who are interested: Pier Luigi Nervi - notice his much earlier sports hall design in Rome!

Cool, we need it. There is barely anything to do here.

I'm glad there are off-topic thread for questions like this: In Chesapeake last night, I was startled by an unusually loud droning noise coming from the Southeast general direction. It sounded like a jet engine of some kind, but much louder, and plus we don't really ever hear jet noise in Greenbrier, haha. Whatever it was, it sounded like it had more energy than anything I've ever heard in my life. Did any one else hear anything of this nature, and if so, any clues as to what in the world it was? I'm very curious.

Yeah I read that yesterday. Made me lol. I drive up to NoVA/DC nearly every weekend to chill and I can agree with your complaint. Even though that entire metro area is 5x more populated than HR, we still have the three most populous cities, so it sucks we don't get half as much attention as up there. Then again, the DC Metro area is more educated, and has more businesses than us. We just got ol' Uncle Sam to rely on. If anything is annoying, it's that we have TOO much military here and minimal business opporunities knockin'. Google should re-locate to Norfolk.

urbanlife: THANK YOU for that incredible picture of Norfolk circa '84. I've been aching to find a really good picture like that to see how the city looked before MacArthur. My childhood memory doesn't serve me very well in that area. I cannot believe how different it looks today!

^Good question, it sure does look it. mikeas: Ill have to check out some of those, but I have been to the Taphouse and I finally stopped in Bier Garden last weekend with some friends. Actually, I hadn't been to DT Portsmouth in over two years and was somewhat impressed with High Street, namely the amount of bars and the great vibes the street design was giving. When I want to go to a bar around here, which isn't so much, I usually go to The Boot, but that has a lot to do with how I know the owners very well, having owned Relative Theory Records on Granby all those years, so I like going there to hang. Sorry for

I fully support a micro-brewery or a Capital Ale House in this area. Only been to CAH once in DT Richmond, and it was an excellent experience. Been to Bull & Bones in Blacksburg, ronsmythe? Delicious beer!

Been waiting for the day someone announces plans for that abandoned warehouse in Fort Norfolk. My friends and I used to sneak in there and just explore that building about a year or so ago, we were up there on July 4, 2008 to watch the fireworks, but it started torrentially raining, I still remember all the boats fleeing down the harbor, lol. We were down there recently and the urge came to check it out once again, but someone finally put some wire mesh in the little openings where we used to have to crawl through to unlock the outer doors. That's the end of my little urban confession story. Anyways, it is definitely a great thing to hear all the little development news arising around DT Norfolk and its surroundings. Makes for an exciting time to be living in this area, especially for the ones who are really pushing for urban growth, which I assume is a high percentage of us here as we spend our time on an urban discussion forum. I also noticed that the area under the Campostella Bridge is looking to redevelop, which I saw either in this thread or another, but that is great news because I've always thought that little area has promising potential, but in its current state, it's horrendous, as many places in Norfolk are sadly. I don't know why, but I constantly daydream about areas around Norfolk that could be their own little urbanized districts (think Ghent/CBD), while simultaneously getting frustrated that it will take so long for visions to see the light of day. Places like Ward's Corner, Harbor Park, Granby Street north of the Zoo, Hampton Blvd. north of the tracks and south of ODU; these could all use better planning and more dense residential units accompanied by great commercial activity.

I may try to attend either of those, if only just to see if any progress has been made on the phase to NSN. Thanks for posting the info.

The public housing issue is one I've been meaning to really explore more for months, but haven't really the time, but I will say that I agree with you on VaRider about getting rid of Tidewater Gardens all together. It's a chokehold on the future urban development in Downtown Norfolk. I briefly just refreshed my memory on the SPQ Vision on Norfolk's web site and was quite impressed. The city website says that a scheduled meeting is supposed to take place on Dec. 3 (this Thursday) for SPQ. Anyone heard any updates on this?

"Ha but you can't use existing freight track for light rail transit" That's what I was looking for. Darn my plan. Screw it, make more lines next to these! I hate all the loopdy loops. They take up so much land!

More truth. There are rail lines everywhere that aren't being utilized to their full potential. Makes me kind of glad that road funding is all dried up for the state, so that maybe more will go towards mass transit funding, since that's Obama's big push anyways. HSR, LRT, BRT. Let's get this region rollin' on rails! VaRider, how would you run LRT down South Military Hwy? In the middle sounds like it would cause ridiculous traffic congestion during construction on a heavily used road. Then all you have left is running it down the sides somehow, where eminent domain costs would be ridiculous. I'm not putting down your opinion, just wanted to know how you would do it. I'm not exactly sure who uses the lines running parallel to 168 right now, but the Ford Plant parking lots where they used to store the trucks are MAJOR locations for stations or something related. I say utilize the lines already in place, if possible. Therefore near the starter line station @ Ballentine moving east: -South through the closed Ford Plant, station at Indian River Road -Station at Campostella Road, near the massive vacant F-150 parking lot -Providence Road station in the forested area could be a Park&Ride -Military Hwy station: Demolish that retail center (Chesapeake Xing) that has continually failed time after time since I was a kid, use the existing parking lot. -A station behind the Wal-Mart shopping center would be nice, even though I'm staunchly against Wal-Mart. -Volvo Parkway station, parking lot in the wooded area in front of Mitsubishi Chemical (damn sprawl creating all these p-lots!!!) -Chesapeake City Park station -Clearfield Ave. station (that area looks different than the Google Maps version now, I'm pretty sure.) -Etheridge Manor/Centerville Station using the fields not being used there for all those neighborhoods. -And so on towards NC??? wow. I really got into that, haha. and thats just for part of chesapeake. my only thing and if someone can help me with this, i am aware trains still use those lines every now and then because years ago I remember them coming through the park when I would go the skate park over there, BUT if not could additional lines be built to the side, or is my theory of stations just not going to work at all, and its all just some utopian dream? Also, hello TONS of land by the new Battlefield/64 interchange, also where new medium density apartments are across the street. Some more TOD action could happen there. woo, someone stop me. i think i think about this too much OH and urbanvb: i know what you mean man, that 264/64 interchange is so terrible its funny. if we get any money for roads that should be top priority, it makes no sense how that thing was designed. i was just talking the other day with my friend about how we spent tons of money on that stupid battlefield interchange, and nothing was wrong with it at all in the first place, in fact, now its more complicated almost, with all the elevated swoops and go over here if you wanna go here, its ridiculous. VDOT, wow.

Damn, you ain't kiddin'. That'd be so perfect man! Oh, and I agree about LR being the future of HR. As long as it doesn't take another decade to get this thing up and going. VA Beach, then Naval Base. Mass transit is so overdue and so necessary for the future of transportation capacity in this region. To be fair, living in this area could be great, if our leaders and the military had been smarter about trans. planning in the past.

The rumors I heard were true then. Sounds like an okay deal, it sure is a good chunk of land to use just for a school, but I guess it's going to be pretty necessary with all the residential development continually going up in Chesapeake. Thanks varider!

Anyone know what the purpose is going to be for that giant plot of land in Greenbrier, where the jail used to be, in front of all the city's public works buildings/storage facilities? That's some good real estate for sure. Maybe a new high school, even though Grassfield is still new. I'm not sure on the condition of the city's schools, but when I graduated four years ago, Indian River was overcrowded for sure.

Oh man that is exciting news on the 2000 referendum! I've lived in Greenbrier for 22 years and it has seen rapid development since I was a kid. I remember when Kempsville Road between Greenbrier Parkway and Volvo Parkway (and further most likely), was just a narrow, two-lane highway! And when GB Middle School was a forest and the forests where the Harris Teeter parking lot now is, where I worked before college and on holiday breaks. This is funny that this was mentioned last night, because as I was driving home from the Base today, as I got further down Greenbrier Parkway, I daydreamed about light rail running down the middle of the lanes one day in my future, or at the least, running on the ROW that goes through Chesapeake City Park (not sure whose line that is). I've always imagined a small Park & Ride garage on the park's property, so that people could catch it there to work in Norfolk / VBch. With that new development going up between the railroad tracks and Green Tree Road (on Kempsville), I had always hoped it would be some really high density place and now come to think of it, Chesapeake could buy up a lot of that land there (it's only a Basnight Lawn place and a large field) and build a small little downtown of some sorts, with light rail coming through. Geez, I get excited about transportation planning. I was also daydreaming at work today about how cool it would be to work for Dulles Transit or VA Dept. of Railways and be working on the planning and design of the Dulles Metrorail Extension project!

That's so sweet! Will be looking forward to some photos and info.!

I think about this everyday and I honestly cannot wait to see a new form of transit rolling around this region. To see light rail trains making their way from city to city is going to be one of the greatest things in the next 10 years. Now if we can just attract some awesome businesses here and really get rolling...in the dough!

I see the VP article from Friday where one of the comments says something about a Navy presentation in which they endorsed it. Have we heard anything from the VP or anyone about the actual potential for DoD funding? Have there been other examples of cities' systems being helped out in this way? By the way, I know I'm stating the obvious which we have stated here multiple times, but the comments over on VP articles are ridiculous. Lots of lols to look forward to everyday. Example: "The very idea of starting the line in Norfolk is nothing less than absolute idiocy in my opinion." -jeffreyr88753 Uuuuuhhhhhhh what? http://hamptonroads....htrail-stations

And the future of transportation in Hampton Roads.