Arctic_Tern

After a quick read I'm guessing that the plan is to extend Monarch Way out to 39th street, and then close off the portion of 40th street between Hampton Blvd and the newly extended Monarch way (or utilize the same space without extending Monarch Way). ODU owns all the parcels around Central Radio too, so I'm guessing we'll see some movement there in the coming years.

Question, is the ODU Real Estate Foundation a legally distinct entity from ODU itself? I haven't seen the school announce anything about a grocery store or apartments, even though I feel like this would be a pretty big deal for them.

The wellness circle proposal would be much better if you're trying to build out an urban area though. It actually establishes a grid pattern and has areas for organic future development. The Crossroads proposal creates a walled garden that will be difficult to access by anything but car for future developers in the area. The bones of the wellness circle proposal are much much better than the crossroads one in my opinion.

Also remember how the city is using this proposal as a seed development. The Military Highway spine is the highest land in the city, and will be a focus of development over the next 50 years. Proposals like this get ahead of that and will help model the direction the City wants to go in for the future of the area.

The more I look through these the more I like the Wellness Circle. Crossroads is nice but seems pretty generic and isolated. I dunno, there's something about that one that makes me feel like it'd be hostile to future nearby developments. And the light rail integration is pretty bad imo. Wish there was a bit more height on the buildings in Wellness Circle, and fewer surface lots, but those aren't dealbreakers for me. I find the addition of townhomes on the eastern side to be really interesting. I really like having the park in the center, and I LOVE the architecture of the proposed stadium. Now I know these are renders and we've been bitten bad by that before (stares at the casino project), but if we could get that stadium that would look amazing.

Oooh I'm gonna have a good evening digging into these. I will say, one of the outcomes I believe the city wants is for this to be a seed of further development to build a new urban core. Crossroads seems nice, but it also seems kinda isolated and I worry it might be difficult to connect it to a more urban footprint in the future. Wellness circle seems like it would flawlessly fit in a larger street grid, but the buildings seem a bit sparse. And the Well, although I do love the park, and feel it would be a great amenity to have, is lacking an arena and it doesn't really seem to have any density whatsoever. But these are just my first impressions. Time to get deep into these proposals

That was for the west side study that goes through Ghent and ODU. The route that would tagalong I-64 and hit the airport and military circle on the way to the Navy Base is the highest land in Norfolk and has been targeted as a priority area for the city. I've talked with current Norfolk City Council members about it before and I have a high confidence of rail being added along that corridor.

No but I have noticed they've been silent on the East expansion of the Tide for a long time. I thought it was to try and bide their time until they could lobby for money as a part of the infrastructure bill, but seeing how it would be an integral part of the Military Circle project that might have something to do with it as well.

Ooooooooooh, good find! The increased range mentioned in the article would be to 4000 nautical miles (~4600 miles). This would also put into range from ORF: Rome, Sao Paulo, The Nordic Countries, Bratislava, all of Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, Czechia, Austria, and Slovenia. Now that would be a pretty big deal.

Unfortunately, after looking at the range of the aircraft (6,300km), it looks like Europe would probably not be the easiest go with this particular plane. Can hit the Ireland/UK, just barely Paris/Western France, just barely Madrid/Western Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and a slight bit of western Africa. Would be easy to get to Bermuda, the Caribbean, anywhere in Mexico, northern South America, anywhere in Canada, and the most populous parts of Alaska. Hoping for a direct to the Caribbean/Cancun, that would be pretty awesome. A Norfolk/Dublin or Norfolk/Iceland flight would be much appreciated too. Funnily enough, this plane would be able to go to Svalbard (a place that I want to visit one day, most northern civilization in the world) and wouldn't be able to go to any of the countries directly south to it. If any Breeze Airways folks are reading just know if you schedule a direct flight between Norfolk and Svalbard just know you'll have already sold one seat.

Thing is if I were a betting man I'd say that they probably don't have a great case, and are just trying to force the City of Norfolk to hand over millions of dollars to make them go away. I'm guessing that they had conversations about a Casino with Pishko, and maybe Pishko even said the city would help. But I would be flabbergasted if there was one drop of ink on a contract that actually said so. If there was, this lawsuit wouldn't be happening now. They're just going for something along the lines of "Pishko misrepresented what the city intended in discussions with Cordish" which is why so much of this has been focused on Pishko, and not any actual contract verbage.

I'm kinda glad that that proposed waterside tower never went through. Cordish is not being a good corporate community member. This reeks of desperation.

Just wanted to add a few shots going down the left side of the building to show what they're doing on the pier side of things. Looks like something significant will be going up there.

Really glad they were able to get something working for that site. Will really help those residents, and I'm glad to see that investor standing up when the other big box stores wouldn't. This should be good for the community and I hope things go well.

I mean, they could. But they'd be missing the $170M grant that the state and federal government was putting up to fund the project. They could try and get that money again but I think the VDOT got pretty burned last time and might not want to look VBs direction for light rail soon.

Oh no believe me, I didn't miss anything. Your ubiquitous posting in this thread is difficult to miss.

It would be pretty surprising if the tribe actually had experience operating gaming, seeing how they were only federally recognized a few years ago.

There's a 5th image on the allinnorfolk site that hasn't been posted much which shows it a bit better: So with my eye I'd say that it looks like they would keep a 2 lane road intact (reference image below) with a roundabout towards the water. One thing I am worried about and hope to get some clarification on is it doesn't look like there's much access to the station from the parking garage. Is that garage meant to still be usable by Amtrak patrons or will they have to use the surrounding lots?

That Arkansas design has less height than this, and is much more suburban. I honestly don't know why you keep bringing it up. If this was proposed for downtown proper or where Waterside is right now then yeah I'd be absolutely furious. But guys look at where it is right now. It's 500 feet from an electric power transfer station for goodness sake. It's taking over an area that is a parking lot, dilapidated pier, and is a brownfield site. It's not what any of us wanted architecturally, but it will help spur development in a part of a city that is formerly industrial and is hemmed in by the intersate, bring traffic to our amtrak and light rail stations, and will improve pedestrian and environmental conditions in the area. If it can do all of that, then this design is fine.

It's a bit disappointing to have the shorter building, but all in all I'd say it's fine. Height in that area is less of a concern for me, and it looks like it's at least a well planned out building with quality materials. Much better than what they were trying to feed us with the new renders of the Gateway Tower. I think it fits the area pretty well and if the casino is helping fund the pedestrian improvements between the river and stadium then that's even better. The infinity pool overlooking the stadium is a nice touch too. I will say it looks a bit blander than the other design, which I think had a very striking design, but all in all I think it looks fine.

Walked around campus this past weekend, got some pics of the new Chemistry building and Owens residential hall. Both of them are actually very nice looking in person. I'd highly recommend taking a look if you're ever on campus. I got a shot of the building itself and then a comparison shot to buildings it was near, to give a bit of context to each building.

Nah man, the different between us is that one wants a discussion on genuine improvements for folks and the other wants to call people commies for doing the former.

I just hope that they reinvest that into the Norfolk one. Pump it up to be a bigger project than whatever richmond will cook up, and looking at the projects that did make it through, I honestly don't think that'd be too difficult.

I would say it is less a failure of public housing, and more a failure of the society. How is it the housings fault if the people living there are prevented from moving upward? So the thing is about gentrification is that there is no one *line*. It is an incredibly grey issue. I think we can all agree it's awful when people are forced out of their homes not for any fault of their own.

You seem to want to argue more about communism/capitalism than have a good faith argument about how to best serve the underprivileged in our society. Which, neat, but the issue is a lot more complex than just saying "let laissez-faire capitalism do all the work". Creating communities and delivering services that work, especially for those that cannot afford to buy solutions, requires careful planning and years long foresight. This isn't about capitalism, it's about planning. (Weird seeing how we're on an urban planning message board right?) Private companies are not some big evil boogeyman, but they are around to do exactly one thing: make money. There is nothing that a company will do if it does not in some way make them more money. So when we cities are planning about how to help people who do not have money to give, they need to be wary of how they can be taken advantage of or else they end up in a situation where they pay more money to put their citizens in a worse situation than if they had just built the damn housing themselves.