urbanlife

I really hope Norfolk goes with reestablishing some sort of street grid with a gathering plaza within the mall site to build around.

While Pembroke Mall should be cut up into blocks and redeveloped that way to look like an extension of the downtown, but I feel like the developers have no idea how to build anything urban and are relying on suburban style planning. It seems like the developers are more interesting in redeveloping Pembroke Mall to look more like the Tyson Galleria rather than The Boro development. This is really unfortunate if they go the Galleria direction because this will basically keep the Pembroke area feeling mostly suburban with some tall buildings.

That was once suggested during the whole Granby Tower fiasco, but the feds declined that option. In a perfect world, what should happen is the Feds should do a land swap with Norfolk where Norfolk gets the current federal courthouse building site and the Granby Tower site in exchange for the Norfolk Schools Administrations building site. Both sites sit outside of the 100 year flood map and would give the Feds a great site to build any kind of federal courthouse they want on it and have it be as secure of a site that they want. The city could then have a new Schools Admin building built over by the City Hall on the site that not that long ago had a tower proposal. Doing this would really consolidate the whole Civic Center. After that, the city could petition for developers to develop the Granby Tower site with a new tower, and have a petition for the renovation and possibly new tower added to the former courthouse building. This would help connect downtown to the Neon District, and give the city 3 new towers (and possibly 4 new towers depending on the design of the federal courthouse.) Or with the Granby Tower site, it could be cut in half, having York run through it at a pedestrian corridor and have two towers built on those two sites. If that happened, then there would be three residential towers at Granby and Brambleton.

A few 15-30 story buildings would have a huge impact. Heck, a bunch of 8-12 story buildings would make a big impact on that area.

Since it lacks a dome, it should probably be references as The Do Me.

It's gonna be pretty amazing when the area between the town center and the mall fills in with buildings and urban streets. Just eyeballing it, that would basically double the size of the downtown.

This is something a second line could achieve better than the existing line. Having a new line that runs from the airport, connects to the existing line through downtown, then have it branch off at Monticello. From there it would run up to this midtown district which it would turn onto 26th and 27th using those two one way streets to run out to Hampton Blvd. Then running up Hampton Blvd through ODU and ending at the gate of the Naval Base. With something like that, a future line could then be extended off of where this line would turn onto 26th/27th and have it run up Granby to Ocean View.

I so wish American cities wouldn't have gotten rid of their streetcar systems. Norfolk should definitely be focusing on expanding their light rail system for themselves. Having a second line run from Midtown through downtown to Military Circle and end at the airport would be a great line to add to the system.

Norfolk should really be looking into extending light rail to this midtown area. That would be a great way to connect midtown and downtown together, and pump a big investment into the area. Also by allowing it to be a real midtown by allowing taller buildings and requiring an urban landscape over suburban style developments is important.

I have to agree with you, the Rudee Loop should have at least one all inclusive resort taking up much of that area.

That would be hilarious if Norfolk ended up with the Pelicans after all these years. The window is definitely closing fast on picking up any team wanting to move or any expansions.

Interesting that they plan to renovate this building rather than it ending up as a teardown and then redeveloping the whole lot. It will be interesting to see how the apartments work out with those narrow windows.

An expansion of the NBA or NHL probably won't happen for Norfolk even if this arena is built. With the NBA, the best bet would be trying to convince the Pelicans to move to Norfolk which would probably be a tough sell for them. With the NHL, there are potentially a few teams that might be interested in moving, but again any NHL team would have plenty of places to choose from. Either league would be an uphill battle. There might be a chance for MLS if and when they expand to 32 teams, which would give Norfolk a spot to compete for.

That sounds like some fantastic changes coming to Laskin and Atlantic. Really turning that area into a little urban district at the beach. It's really great to see things I imagined happening back in the mid 90s finally starting to happen.

I agree, Norfolk could definitely do a lot of grassroots pocket urban areas that strengthen walkable communities. With that happening, over time, things get more desirable and makes it easier to potentially going back to light rail and expanding the city with multiple lines in the city.

My only issue with this would be that route would be a good light rail route running up Church to Granby to Oceanview. That would have made a great investment line for potential redevelopments all along that route. Though bike lanes along Granby is good too since there is no reason for that road to be 6 lanes.

Three things, one, this is an awesome type of development that would work perfectly for Hampton and I hope it leads to more mixed use developments in their downtown like this because it is such a wasted historical downtown right now. Two, talk about being super light on the details for something that is supposed to be built this year, I highly doubt summer of 2022 is gonna happen unless this is in full swing construction now. Three, someone should tell them that Nauticus, while a beautiful photo of that building, isn't in Hampton and they should probably spend the all of 5 minutes it would take to figure out what photo of Hampton they would need to use. Clearly some intern google searched "Hampton Roads" and called it good.

I really hope all of these buildings end up going up around the same time for you guys, it is so awesome to see your city full of cranes and being able to see it drastically change right in front of you.

If any building gets built where the Taco Bell is, it should forever be referred to as the "Taco Bell Tower."

This is the kind of developments I imagine would go up in downtown VB.

Main St area would be so beautiful today had it still had most of those historic buildings. If all those new towers would have been built along Brambleton, it would have doubled the size of downtown and created a new and old parts to the downtown.

It's still a pretty large block compared to other cities. Though, if the plan is to build an office building, then one building that takes up much of the site makes more sense for floor space. If it is residential focused, then a two tower design or a tower and shorter tower makes more sense.

I used to fantasize what it would look like to see a secondary skyline driving over this bridge every time I crossed it. Great to see that is finally becoming a reality, and I have to say, it looks decent.

That would be a good addition to the VB Downtown

It's a big site that could have a couple towers on a base on it if they wanted to.