urbanlife

With the building booms so many cities saw during the 2000s before the recession and then this recent building boom before the pandemic, it is really sad to see a city like Norfolk not benefit from either of this. You would have thought the whole Fort Norfolk, the Neon District, and St Paul areas would be in full force urban redevelopment.

Norfolk, 1996. This was the year I graduated high school, and this was the downtown I grew up with. This is what I thought downtowns just looked like, a street with some office buildings, another street with some old buildings, and a lot of surface parking lots. Looking at this photo with the city I grew up by, it really makes me sad how much of this city was lost to itself. When looking at this photo, it makes sense to plop a giant mall in that spot because it wasn't taking over anything of value anymore because that was already gone. Hopefully with replacing the mall, the street grid can be recreated and hopefully a new center of downtown could rise up from this.

The long sidewalk of dead space is a bit concerning about how this whole development is going to turn out. It doesn't look like it will be that active of a district.

It is so sad what racism did to that street and neighborhood.

One thing that has always confused me about the history of Norfolk is when the redeveloped downtown in 1955, why did they tear down all the old buildings along Main when they could have just put all the new office buildings along St Paul, which was a new street that they cut through the old street pattern. That way it would have been an expansion of downtown rather than knocking down the existing downtown. Unfortunately that decision wasn't made back then.

Wow, good to see that lot finally being developed.

Not that any of this will happen, but just looking at this map, I can see directions the city should go with light rail and BRT. Bus Rapid Transit from the Naval Base to Military Circle does make sense, what doesn't make sense is stopping light rail at Military Circle. Light rail should run up to the airport and have multiple connections with BRT during that stretch. It would help maximize the two transportation systems. From there, a second light rail line should run up Granby to Oceanview, through downtown, and over into South Norfolk. From there, the city could expand BRT to where light rail doesn't go and have the two systems working together.

Those two buildings turned out really well.

Oh man, I remember this proposal. It probably would have looked out of place, but it would have given some serious skyline height to where it was gonna go.

It looks better than what I was expecting from a quick glance. The size of the buildings are about what I was expecting, though I do hope they end up building taller buildings closer to St Paul which really should be reserved completely for tall buildings. The small parks and plazas with the mix of street level commercial is also a great quality to building a walkable neighborhood. I also like the more contemporary architecture look of the buildings because it would be nice for Norfolk to have a district that feels new and modern rather than trying to pretend to be historic. There is enough of that type of architecture in Hampton Roads. As for the density, that is an interesting question and leads me to believe that many of those buildings are single family townhouses rather than multi unit buildings and apartment/condo buildings. There should definitely be a better mix of the two to help promote density and making it easier to incorporated mixed income housing.

With Brooklyn, only 12 buildings are taller than 500ft, and even then 4 of them are just barely over 500ft. Most towers in Brooklyn are shorter than 500ft with neighborhoods full of 2-4 story buildings. While Brooklyn has a much bigger population, the walkable structure of Brooklyn can be done on a smaller scale like Richmond. It requires creating street level commercial active streets and limited the amount of dead zones (areas where there are no residential or commercial entrances other than garage entrances.) Richmond would be an easy city to model this in and around its downtown because a lot of its historic urban structure still exists. With Richmond, it is on the smaller medium city metric. The city I live in, Portland, Oregon used to be one of these smaller medium cities. We have seen a huge amount of growth and new developments, but we haven't seen much in the way of new tallest buildings with the current tallest buildings being two buildings that are both about 540ft. We have had a few new 450ft buildings go in and a lot of 250-325ft buildings which have had a huge effect on the look and feel of the city. This is something Richmond could easily benefit from. Though the demand for urban highrise living has to come from the people who live in Richmond and the businesses it is trying to attract. In Portland, this shift happened when an old railyard was turned into the Pearl District, and became a wealthy urban district next to downtown similar to what is happening in the Scotts Addition which will eventually turn into quite a great urban district for the city. Scotts Addition is also a great metric on measuring what should be considered a part of the urban city center and everything in between should be focusing on upzoning and developing. How that happens is a tough one because it's all in the marketing and proper planning to entice people to want to move to Richmond, want to live downtown and in the surrounding urban areas, and to attract the kind of businesses that want to be located in walkable urban areas. Plus expanding the airport to be able to pick up more direct flights. The connections to Europe and Asia (especially Asia being on the west coast) has played a huge factor in my city's growth.

I get what you are saying and I am not disagreeing with that. There are 700+ft towers that can also be designed to be better connected to the street to create street activity. Though height isn't that important compared to street activity. A city can have no building be over 10 stories and be one of the most active cities you have ever walked around in, and then a city could have a bunch of towers and be a ghost town on the streets. This is why I don't really concern myself with the height of the building, though I also think arbitrary height limits are pointless. (Height limits that have specific reasons like protecting viewpoints and making sure the most amount of sunlight is able to reach the streets are important.) A 700ft tower in Richmond would look nice, but so would a couple dozen 200-350ft buildings, a mix of residential, hotel, and commercial, which would add a lot more urban activity to the city, especially in and around downtown. Could you imagine how amazing it would be for there to be 200-350ft buildings between downtown and VCU. That whole area could be full of stores and restaurants and bars and cafes which would create such a great urban environment. Park Slope in Brooklyn is one of the most active neighborhoods I have been in and it has no real towers in the entire neighborhood other than the larger buildings that have been going up on 4th and that area is extremely active because there is so much to walk to and so many people living in that area. Having people living in and around downtown is extremely important. One last thing on height, in the end, the building needs to be profitable for a developer. No developer is going to build a 700ft building just because it looks cool, nor are they going to build a 400-500ft building for the same reason. These things have to pencil out and be profitable for a developer.

I am remembering why I moved to the Northwest and not to Richmond when I was looking to move away from Virginia Beach. 90s Richmond had no real development action going on during that time and a city like Seattle was much more alluring to me. Oddly enough, I never ended up in Seattle when I moved to the Northwest, and ended up falling in love with Portland instead. Though had it been now that I was looking to move, the Northwest would have been too expensive, and Richmond would be showing a lot of promise, plus I would have just kept my condo in VB and used it as a rental.

The problem with those 700ft+ towers is they tend to be isolated buildings. plus no one is going to build that tall just for icon points. Buildings like that have to pencil out and most buildings that pencil out are 5-25 stories. My comment about 400-500ft buildings is just being realistic. Sure, someone could build much taller, but even a 400-500ft building would really stand out. Another thing I was pointing out is that the bulk of buildings being built aren't going to be the tallest buildings, so focusing on street activity is more important than building height. With focusing on the street activity, if that causes developers to want to build taller, then that's great and shouldn't be limited. So I am not saying that buildings should have a height limit of 250ft, I am just saying that's a good target size for most building. Look at a city like NYC, there are lots of buildings going up there, most of them are under 250ft.

I remember complaining about this in the 90s when I was learning how Virginia functions. The reason why Hampton Roads is a collection of cities with no counties is because the only way to work together was to merge towns with counties to create cities so that services could be shared instead of just letting counties and cities share services like literally every other state in the country. The other side of this is NoVa, which is several counties that happen to be full of unincorporated urban districts that function like cities without being identified as a city. It really makes no sense and I don't know why anyone hasn't run for Governor with this being their platform to get rid of this ideocracy so that counties and cities can have shared services. If you look at Brooklyn and Long Island City (Queens) they are seeing massive growths to their downtowns but almost every one of the new towers and several have been new tallest for each area have all been residential. When I used to work in Brooklyn, people from Brooklyn didn't like my joke that downtown Brooklyn was becoming a residential neighborhood for Lower Manhattan, but it is true. It's much less of a downtown today and much more of a residential highrise neighborhood. Towers are nice but they don't have to be super tall to be good looking towers. With Richmond, a 400-500ft tower would easily stand out in the skyline. The target for Richmond would be a lot of 75-250ft buildings with a large amount of street level commercial with each building to help create pedestrian activity on the street level and in turn help create a more vibrant city. You are also right about tall towers, they tend to function more as suburban style office towers than they do as parts of the urban fabric of the city. This can be fixed by having the lower functions of the building focus outward to the sidewalks rather than inward, thus making it so people working in the tower has to come out onto the sidewalks to go to things that would normally be within an office tower. Here is something to think about because I understand where you are coming from, and I lived in NYC for a couple years and I too enjoy towers. I really loved seeing the construction of towers more than the completed towers because of my college architecture background. But here's the thing, when visiting NYC, how much of that time is spent going up into all the towers you are seeing compared to how much time is spent walking the sidewalks and into all the shops, cafes, bars, coffee shops, delis, and so on? The towers don't make NYC, the endless blocks of sidewalk activities, street level commercial, and easy walkability and transit are what makes NYC the city it is. If Richmond focused on 5-25 story buildings and required every building to have 70% street level commercial, Richmond could also have that same feeling that NYC has because there would be so much to walk to in the city.

I always imagined the part that was supposed to be the twin tower would eventually get a new modern tower on that side and to at least modernize the base of the building.

Connecting it to ODU and the airport should be a priority for the next expansion or additional lines.

Norfolk should definitely be looking at expanding light rail throughout the city, and working with surrounding cities that also want to be connected by light rail.

So is the building getting redeveloped or a massive renovation or are they actually putting office space in a windowless big department store building?

It may be questionable if the population has shrunk, but it definitely didn't see any rapid growth that other cities has seen. Something Norfolk should have been enjoying during this last boom when people were looking for more affordable urban options.

Those are good questions that will definitely have to be answered with what the future of Military Circle will be. I hope whatever happens, it will be to turn that area into a new urban district that can be connected and expanded to its surroundings, and include the expansion of the light rail system because that is how Norfolk is going to reverse this shrinking population trend by making itself more desirable to those that would want to live in a small growing urban city. Something to keep in mind, Military Circle is about double the size of the VB Town Center (not including Pembroke Mall and surrounding areas outside of the original town center.) In a perfect world, there would be an urban corridor from Military Circle to Pembroke Mall.

Seems like what Richmond is doing right, Norfolk isn't doing. If I were my 24yr old self owning a condo in VB, I would be renting it out and moving to Richmond with all the positive changes they have been making. It's really amazing going on the Richmond page to see how much that city is changing. Like Richmond, Norfolk should be capitalizing on people looking for that urban lifestyle that can't afford to live in more popular cities. That is basically how Portland, OR blew up in growth, my city was seen as the cheap west coast city option for those wishing to live in SF or Seattle but both were too expensive for them. Now people that would have moved to Portland are looking for someplace like Portland but more affordable. Its not surprising to see how fast Chesapeake is growing, but it is sad to see it basically becoming the new Virginia Beach without a beach. At this rate, it will just become a big massive suburban sprawl city like VB with no real urban center. Oddly enough, hopefully the Dollar Tree can fill that urban void. On a side note, I tip my hat to Alexandria, I didn't know they even had any room left to grow in that little old city.

Are those two involved in either of these projects? Definitely the key things to look at are the overall plans and how the whole site will function with itself and its surroundings. The architecture at this point is just meant to be eye pleasing and catch people's attention, not reflect what will actually be built. I do like how the third plan included light rail within the design, I can't remember if the other two did that. Added: Okay, looking back over the plans I answered my own questions, I totally missed the Emmitt and Pharrell parts. That being said, here is my breakdown of each one with what I do and don't like about them. Crossroads is nice overall, its basically a glorified mixed use office park with an arena. If that gets built, it will be nothing special but it will be useful. What I don't like about it, is that it called for 7,000+ parking spots and zero mention of light rail beyond pointing out that light rail could be nearby but not a part of the development. Housing is good that it looks to have mixed incomes to enjoy the space, but it will be households that will still need to rely on having 1-2 cars to function. So it will look urban but function suburban. The Norfolk MC plan is a joke, these are people with no plan but want to get in on the action so they can wing it as they go. It shouldn't even be humored as a proposal. Wellness Circle is not only a proposal for this site, it is something that can be built off of and expanded. The plan isn't an inward thinking design like a suburban office park, it is designed to be connected to its surroundings. The plan also calls for 4500 parking spots and has light rail designed to run through the development making it a key urban factor to connect this urban center to downtown. This would be an extension of downtown. Like Crossroads, this also calls for mixed income residential, which is also a plus. This plan also really focuses on the importance of parks with living and working near parks rather than just being what you do with the spaces that aren't buildings or parking spots. Obviously, the Wellness Circle is my number one choice because it is probably the best option to redevelop Military Circle into an urban district. The Crossroads development would be okay if the plan was just to build something that looked urban but was appealing to suburbanites.

Nothing like watching a movie while a water feature makes you think about how badly you need to pee.

Reese's would just get to live rent free in that arena.