Arctic_Tern

Other than the airport and navy base, where do people actually want to go on the Eastside right now? Are these the type of people that want to take LRT to get to these places, and if LRT does go to these places, is it better than the alternative? The tide has a problem in that it's got a bunch of TOD, and few current destination stops, and they're generally clustered in downtown. On the Eastside, I see those two spots, and potential TOD. Westside alignment gives people places that they actually want to go. It gets actual riders. It gives people a valid alternative to three places that people hate to park at (Ghent/ODU/Base). Depending on the line route, it adds to the TOD value of the Fort Norfolk, and other stops. I love the idea of the Tide, but if you don't give people destinations people aren't going to ride it and it loses its effectiveness as a tool for economic growth. The health of the system is better if we go with the Westside route over the Eastside, in my opinion.

Can't say I agree with Mr. Pascale. Denver airport serviced 5 million people this past May. (https://www.flydenver.com/sites/default/files/downloads/May 2017 Management Monthly Flydenver.pdf) ORF serviced 300,000. (http://www.norfolkairport.com/sites/default/files/Enews%26Stats06292017.pdf). The comparison just isn't apt. ORF cannot produce enough riders per day to make an extension there anything but an incentive to try and bring more airlines/flights to ORF. The westside expansion would do a lot more for the day to day ridership.

I very much dislike that Greyhound station. It's a run-down building and is one of the first things people see in the arts district. Bleh. I hope they tear it down and turn it into an anything else. I agree that it's a gateway property and as such should present the NEON district in a much better light. What it should be I don't know. I personally would consider NEON to be a part of "downtown", but I don't think you'll ever see any towers there anytime soon. What will probably happen is when we do see new construction it will be of buildings around 3-5 stories in size. If you haven't been there recently, they've been competing demolition of an old building on the site of a new apartment complex. I think it's been discussed on here before. EDIT: Can't confirm it's the apartments being made, but that's what makes sense given the location and its history.

Didn't go to the Main, walked through Waterside for a hot second though on Friday and Saturday. Place was packed with people. Overheard a few of the security folks talking about liking Grain though.

What business is in that first picture @vdogg?

I think it's a very good idea. Not all that go through it will be successful, but having a place to start seems like it could be super beneficial to local small businesses.

Along with the lack of height, one of the other things I don't really care for about this proposal is that it makes one big L-shaped superblock comprising of the City Hall, Apartment and Parking Garage/Hotel buildings and cuts off Columbus Street. Shouldn't VB be trying to do the opposite? Town Center's blocks are already pretty big, I personally feel like they should be trying to get smaller ones planned.

What we're missing out on is not the size and scale of a large brewery, but the opportunity to have a smaller experimental system where you'd get strange/weird brews for the testing grounds. If one of these experimental brews worked and became part of Starr Hill's permanent line-up, I bet you either the name of the brew or the packaging would in some way reference Norfolk. Starr Hill, from my experience, has a better distribution network up in NoVA and further north than a lot of our local brewers, so having beers from NFK distributed by them helps get our name out there. Now, this isn't to say Norfolk doesn't have any experimental breweries (in fact, small-batch brewing is the mission of the soon-to-open Bearded Bird Brewing Co), or doesn't have good distribution (O'Connors in particular is starting to crack its way up north). But I do think having it as an actual brewery would be better for the city and for Waterside, and what it is now is a disappointing decrease in scale.

That along with the lights upon Granby, seems like Norfolk's trying to relive its glory days. Everything that's old is new again.

The Main has that new raw bar on the first floor.

That would really hurt regional transit in my opinion. You'd have cities playing hot potato, trying as hard as they can to go as little into other cities as possible. This of course promotes more stagnation and division between the cities and would basically eliminate any possibility of light rail building past the boundary of Norfolk.

If it isn't the skate shop, then it'd probably be JHANÉ’S Sweet Lounge http://www.norfolk.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/2740?fileID=6291

Random Tidbit. It looks like the poem that is on the two wooden (?) towers on each side of the building facing Waterside Drive can be found here: https://www.cardcow.com/290051/poem-about-virginia-poems/ Not sure if they're still planning on using that, but found it just in case.

Also, I did some digging around the Waterside District website, and I found this PDF: http://www.watersidedistrict.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WatersideDistrict-EventsReferenceGuide-2017.pdf It looks like a presentation to advertise their ability to host private events (of up to 6000 people combined!), but it has some awesome renderings of The Market, The Harbor Club, The Blue Moon Taphouse, as well as a floorplan for the 1st and 2nd floors! Although, to my eye, it looks like the 1st floor still has a bunch of open space where unannounced tenants will go, and the 2nd floor layout looks like it was clipped from a larger layout (I also doubt that the 2nd floor will just be the Harbor Club). The last slide features another Cordish property (I think Baltimore?) that has floating eating areas. That looks like a great use of the water! Why haven't we seen that in the Waterside proposal yet? I'm really interested to see what else is going to be announced in the coming weeks. Less than 9 weeks until it's supposed to open.

I could see City Council being wary of a Cordish Apartment Complex due to a couple of concerns. - Possible saturation of the market. Norfolk has added more than 1000 rooms to the Downtown apartment scene in the past few years. This is an amazing growth, but most of these apartments are already at the higher end when it comes to rent ($1250+/month). Council might want to see how the Icon does before adding another luxury apartment complex. - Protecting of previous investments. The city has invested heavily in projects like Waterside and The Main. Since a tower built at the annex site would partially block the views of the water from The Main, there could be a worry about hurting a relationship with that developer as well as devaluing a quality property bringing new business into Norfolk. It's also my personal belief the reason the last Waterside project ultimately went sour was because it grew too quickly without gaining a proportional amount of new customers. They could want to guard against doing the same thing with Waterside again. - Relationship with Cordish. Waterside has long been a beleaguered project and Cordish hasn't made things easy, at least for the full length of the relationship it has had with the city. Don't forget, this is a project that has been through multiple iterations with long delays and problems with financing. The City may be a bit hesitant to grant Cordish a prominent sky-line tower without seeing how their follow-through with Waterside is first. Ultimately, I think that the tower at that location could be a good thing, especially if it encourages development along the rest of the waterside through past Harbor Park. If this tower does happen, I would hope the city would make some improvements to make pedestrian traffic move easier between Waterside and Main/Granby St. Bruce Thompson mentioned the idea of a pathway between The Main and Waterside that would go through the parking lot of the customhouse at the bottom of this article ( http://pilotonline.com/inside-business/news/commercial-real-estate/developer-arts-extravaganza-to-mark-opening-of-the-main/article_8c11044f-dc9b-5975-8963-e875bd103404.html ), and it's an idea that I very much enjoy. Put a parking garage behind the customhouse, and made that parking lot into a beautiful walkway/parklet and you might finally see some connectivity within downtown of all its jumbled parts.

According to the linked article: "Downtown Norfolk has seen vacancy rates in Class A and B product drop from 32.6 percent in third-quarter 2015 to 12.9 percent in third-quarter 2016." The rest of the article talks about Buddy Gadams, Cordish and other downtown developments. But WOW, a 20% drop in vacancy in a year? that's pretty impressive.

If Virginia Beach continues to reject the arena plan, I could see Norfolk putting it where Military Circle Mall is today. It looks like it could fit into the Military Circle master plan in between the two proposed light rail stations. Could be something to jumpstart the urbanization of the area.

Penny-wise and Pound-foolish. What you do when you require people to transfer from one mode to another (hell, even one train to a *different type of train*!!!), you're creating a barrier that limits how many people will ride it. If the light rail system gets built out fully, you could have an uninterrupted system that stretches from the oceanfront to the naval base and connects two of the biggest downtowns of Hampton Roads. That is worth a lot more than saving pennies on maintenance costs.

At the very least it's going to have quite the presence on Monticello Ave. I was a bit worried about this project, but those renderings make me more optimistic.

I could see the Tide moving past there if they do the eastern route of expansion. Maybe improvements can be made to Miller Store Road? Would love to have an IKEA in the area though.

In a recent report talking about dominion boulevard, upgrading to an interstate was mentioned several times. No timetable though. EDIT: Also, here's a quote from the second article NFKJeff posted: "I-87 will eventually begin at the I-64/I-464 interchange in Chesapeake following U.S. 17 into North Carolina." I remember a few months ago there was considerable push by Virginia Congressmen/Senators to get the Interstate part of the transportation bill passed since it would include this connector.

Thou Shalt Grow posted a new update on Waterside: http://www.thoushaltgrow.com/ Here's the full PDF: http://www.norfolk.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/2429?fileID=5578 New information about the project can be gleamed from this application for architectural review. First of all, it looks like the roof will now be grey instead of blue. It also looks like there's going to be a Bocce ball court in the bottom left of the complex. The area to be demolished is being called a "Multifunctional Area", which it appears will house the surface lot parking along with "special events". There's also a ton of little things that are in the report, so I'd suggest you give it a look through. A good number of renderings I don't think we've seen before are also in it.

You mean Bold Mariner?

They'll probably wait a little while. One of the things that the Main is selling are the views, and if waterside had a 15-25 story tower, that'd impact that view at least a little. Norfolk City Council probably won't allow it up until they think that the Main has gotten its due diligence.

It's possible they couldn't/didn't want to fill those spaces without potentially diluting the quality of the experience. It also gives them the flexibility to do what they choose if this place does gangbusters and they want to expand. If they can do something useful with the space in the meantime (stage, greenspace, park, rockwall, etc) then I think it could be a net positive.