urbanlife

It is still strange seeing Virginia Beach having some sort of urban feel to it.

Basically, it's the just in case a company comes along wanting to build a new tower then they have a site to use rather than letting another developer get the opportunity to build it.

Damn, those two garages are so massively sprawling and ugly. It's like when they were built the developer requested that the garages feel like surface parking lots.

I agree with you about the garages, since they do eat up a lot of real estate, but an argument for keeping the garages is that they are expensive to building and these towers will probably rely on them heavily so that the towers themselves won't need garages, which reduces construction costs. Looking at the rendering and Google Maps, it is possible that the southern garage along City Hall Ave could one day be redeveloped if the demand is there. The other garage will probably always be there because it doesn't seem like there is much opportunity to reconnect anything to the northern part of downtown in that area.

I get that, though I always imagined it like a Southern Back Bay, which I guess is a Manhattan Upper Westside for Boston.

The view of the city from Tredegar Green is amazing, it would really be cool to see a bunch of 250-300ft residential buildings going up in Monroe Ward; that would really extend the city skyline and urban feel of the city.

This is my favorite part of the article. "Kelley said there are 11 miles of "pipes" that can be found underneath two miles of the roadway. When crews went to remove the pipes marked as abandoned, they found several were still active."

Basically they would build an office building right now if an an anchor tenant was seeking the space. This is where Virginia Beach government should be trying to lure businesses to Virginia Beach by showcasing what VB has to offer and what the future of the downtown will be, especially with a new office building.

Damn, that's similar pricing for the apartment buildings I live in in Portland, Oregon. Granted this is a new building, but it feels like it is high for Norfolk....either that or rents are basically high everywhere.

I still can't understand why the Federal Courts would want this land, I would have imagined they would want to do a more secure location than the current location.

For those that don't want to turn their head.

Thanks for bringing up the Granby Mall with what not to do. What is wrong with that photo? Easy, there is zero housing in that photo. Europe makes pedestrian streets work because the commercial corridor is surrounded with dense housing, and often times a transit hub. Granby St doesn't need cars, it needs people.

What about Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Anterpen, or Lyon? I get not wanting in the live in the large cities in Europe just like most don't want to live in large cities in the US, but what about the mid sized cities that are more comparable to Virginia Beach and the cities in Hampton Roads? The US can be both vast and still have our cities be human scale rather than car centric.

Or do what European cities do when they provide reasons not to need a car to enjoy living in a city.

This could really be a boon for South Norfolk, hopefully Chesapeake goes along with this and decided to add a second light rail line to the system.

Oh wow, never thought I would see a pile driver on this site.

I can't remember the name of the tower, but it has a sad history. It was one of the tall old towers in the downtown, eventually the whole facade of the building was removed and modernized. Eventually the building was torn down for the 300 E Main Tower to be built on the whole block. Here is a photo of the tower in it's original form in what used to be downtown Norfolk. It is the tall building in the center about a block west of where the confederate soldier statue once stood. Here is another view of the building from the street, you can see the Hampton Roads Maritime building for reference. And here it is when Urban Renewal was tearing apart downtown before the tower was modernized. You can see the Hampton Roads Maritime building to the right of the building. And this is what the building looked like before it was torn down... If you wish to see more of Norfolk History in photos, this is the site I regularly go to for most of these these photos. https://nrha.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

Honestly, if that Norfolk still existed today, I am not entirely sure I would have ever moved away, especially if the city invested in its rail public transportation to preserve its urban characteristics.

It is a shame this Norfolk no longer exists. Imagine if much of this would have survived, it would have been such a unique urban downtown. Figured it would be good to put these two images together.

I'm with you on this, the whole counties merging with towns should have never been allowed in Hampton Roads. It would have been much better off letting the counties, towns, and cities to all exist together. Then Virginia Beach could have continued to focus on being a resort city, Pembroke could have become a growing city in Princess Anne County, and the county could have continued to be half suburban sprawl, half farm land with some swamps mixed in.

Good to see those old architects that designed all those buildings are still finding employment....

What the city should do is bulldoze the whole mall, garages and all. Reconstruct a new street grid, and then put together a development commission that is in charge of working with developers to get the lots developed. The Dillards building would be a great location for a plaza. The city could work to get something like an Urban Target built to replace the loss of the mall. With having a development commission, they can guide the growth of the area by requiring specific commercial corridors, and even work with developers when it comes to any new garages that would need to be built, though it would be ideal to focus on housing since office towers are becoming relics of American cities.

My guess would be either Baltimore/DC or Atlanta, with Baltimore/DC being the likely location. This definitely sounds like they are moving on from the Virginia Beach Town Center, which is unfortunate and could be a good thing in the long run by potentially having various other developers expanding the area rather than it all be built by one developer. Interesting to see that VBTC was basically the springboard for the company to help them jump to bigger markets, which sadly says something about VB and the rest of Hampton Roads.

Progress?

This would be really unfortunate if that is what ends up there because the land for this part of the downtown could easily be 6 blocks of urban development.