Norfolk: Jacksonville's Twin?
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An economy based off shipbuilding and the Navy. A riverfront downtown, decimated by urban renewal in an Atlantic Coast city, in stiff competition with it's southside and beach suburbs. Sounds like Jacksonville, however it's Norfolk, Virginia. Despite the economic similarities it's downtown revitalization tactics have been acclaimed in the economic development world to be a true success. Should Jacksonville take notice?
Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/497
It's not really elaborated in the article, but Norfolk officials and residents have decided to construct a starter light rail line, as opposed to a city wide, bus rapid transit plan that won't be operational until 20 years down the road.
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QuoteThe Tide - Norfolk's future Light Rail Transit System is a $232 million project proposed to extent 7.4 miles from the Eastern Virginia Medical Center through downtown Norfolk, and continuing along the Norfolk Southern Right of Way, adjacent to the I-264 corridor to Newtown Road. The project sponsor is Hampton Roads Transit (HRT), the region's sole transit provider.
Eleven stations will be constructed along the route with three park & ride locations that provide access to major areas such as Norfolk State University, Tidewater Community College (Norfolk Campus), Harbor Park, City Hall, MacArthur Center, and the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. The system, a combination of city streets and an existing rail corridor purchased from Norfolk Southern, will carry approximately 11,500 people per day.
About 56% of the project capital costs are expected to be paid with federal funds; the remainder will be paid by state and local funding. HRT is currently in the Final Design phase, the last phase prior to construction. HRT expects to receive an agreement by the federal government for its share of the project costs by late summer 2007. Construction on the rail system is expected to begin in fall 2007 and be fully operational by early 2010. Hampton Roads Transit believes that The Tide is the beginning of what will eventually become a regional light rail system in Hampton Roads.
http://www.gohrt.com/developmentprojects/norfolklightrailtransitproject.html (http://www.gohrt.com/developmentprojects/norfolklightrailtransitproject.html)
Tide Light Rail Renderings
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already planning for TODs
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The similarities are amazing. I think this has to be one of the best comparisons yet.
For some reason I've always pictured Norfolk as the smaller metro.
Norfolk's metro has been larger for quite a while, yet Jacksonville's skyline is much more impressive in height and size. One thing we don't have to deal with that they do, is the intense competition between them and the similar sized surrounding cities.
Could you imagine how difficult it would be for downtown Jax to strive, if the Southside was it's own incorporated city and actively seeking to be the "big urban dog" on the block by attempting to build it's own real downtown.....highrises, shops, urban lofts and all? That's something Norfolk has to deal with on a daily basis.
Maybe the lack of competition holds back our creativity?
No doubt....Competition has really made that community work hard to enhance it's quality of life offerings, for residents and tourists.
Norfolk has a pretty impressive list of projects as well. Again, very comparable to Jax.
Read about it over at Urban Planet:
http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=21475
Excellent comparison. Great work. I never knew Norfolk had a DT mall. Migh tbe interesting to find out how that came about. San Diego and Indy have one as well. I believe both were heavily subsidized by the city. Indy's was a Simon mall, which is HQed in Indy. That no doubt helped.
Norfolk's was heavily subsidized as well. The city invested more than $100 million to construct the mall's parking garages and clean up the streetscapes/improve lighting on all the downtown streets surrounding it.
Does anyone have any estimates as to how many dontown residents Norfolk has?
I spent some time in Norfolk last spring. I didn't get the sense being there that it was a bigger metro area than Jacksonville. It was a nice are but it did not feel like 1M+. The two areas have something else in common. Jacksonville is close to St Augustine as Norfolk is close to Williamsburg.
Quote from: Jason on July 24, 2007, 02:34:14 PM
Does anyone have any estimates as to how many dontown residents Norfolk has?
3,700 residents, according to this 2007 downtown progress report.
http://www.downtownnorfolk.org/documents/GrowthReport2007.pdf (http://www.downtownnorfolk.org/documents/GrowthReport2007.pdf)
So what if you're the suburban community with a bigger population than the inner city, who refuses to submit to the traditional downtown being the metro's core? In Virginia Beach, they decided to basically build their own to compete head-to-head. I guess you could call it the urbanizing of urban sprawl. Consider it sort of a vertical condensed Gate Parkway or Southpoint. Here's a few aerials of the Virginia Beach Town Center.
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QuoteThe Town Center of Virginia Beach is the heart of a new mixed-use “main street†style development located at the core of the Central Business District and is the home of its cultural, business and retail activities. Spanning over 17 city blocks, The Town Center provides a mix of upscale retail, luxury residential, Class A offices, a business class hotel and an array of restaurants.
In 2007, the Town Center will feature a new 38-story deluxe Westin Hotel and the Westin Virginia Beach Town Center Residences along with the Sandler Center for Performing Arts.
*The Town Center will accommodate 4.3 million square feet of mixed-use finished space.
*Strategically situated in the Central Business District of Virginia Beach, The Town Center is 11 miles from Downtown Norfolk, and 11 miles from the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
*Armada Hoffler Tower, a landmark that serves the region, is visible throughout Hampton Roads and is the second tallest building in Virginia.
*At full capacity, The Town Center will have a living and working population of over 24,000.
*A highly skilled and educated workforce of 153,315 individuals is employed within a 5-mile radius of The Town Center.
*The Town Center offers more than 3,200 free public parking spaces in several covered garages and surface lots, as well as on-street.
http://www.towncenterofvirginiabeach.com/ (http://www.towncenterofvirginiabeach.com/)
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Sorry, the Beach claims they don't compete, they want to complement....QuoteVirginia Beach developers and city officials have long desired a downtown to rival Norfolk's but insist that theirs is different.
``The central business district is the uptown to Norfolk's downtown,'' Divaris said. He compared it to the Buckhead area in Atlanta, Century City outside Los Angeles or the Galleria area outside downtown Houston, all urban centers in their own right but not overshadowing the traditional metropolitan downtowns nearby.
``Every single traditional downtown has an uptown,'' Divaris said. ``They don't compete with one another; they complement one another.''
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp951203/12020519.htm (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp951203/12020519.htm)
Due to the zoning change to allow dense structures, another similar type development is planned nearby. You can see the Town Center's buildings in the background.
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The VA Beach Town Center is very similar to the Kendall developments in Miami (just a smaller scale). That is exactly the type of development I have hoped for in the I95/JTB corridor. Too bad that area may be too far gone to creat a truely urban environment. It can easily densify though by filling in some surface parking with mixed use developments and by adding in a few more cross streets.
Here is the Southpoint area today...
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Now picture an expanded street "grid" (marked in blue) and some mixed use developments covering the surface parking lots with good street frontage and parking garages. This area could then become a true "live, work, play" neighborhood. An eventual link with mass transit would then set it off from the rest of the burbs completely.
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The whole Light Rail Project was started by Virginia Beach! When completed it will be just under 19 miles long and still cost 1/2 of our new highway for a bus! QuoteVirginia Beach Becomes Spectator as Norfolk Readies for Light-Rail Project
Now that Hampton Road Transit and Norfolk leaders have overcome ''the Federal Transit Administration's stringent economic hurdles'' for their light-rail project, Virginia Beach officials should ''tally the price'' of their 1999 referendum that took the resort city out of the light-rail partnership, says a Virginian-Pilot editorial, stressing that ''at $230 million for 7.4 miles, it is still much cheaper to move people on rail than on asphalt'' and that Norfolk's biggest payoff will likely lie in ''smart-growth, transit-oriented development around some of its 11 light rail stations.''
Norfolk and Virginia Beach, some 18 miles east, are connected by I-264 and Virginia Beach Boulevard, but ''(e)conomics, lifestyle and common sense beg for the clusters of stores, businesses and destinations to be linked by something more,'' the editorial notes, sorry the future light-rail line will not reach the oceanfront.
What's more, Virginia Beach -- also hurt by its earlier decision to close expressway tolls and divest itself of funds for the needed $1 billion of improvements along I-264 to ease mid-city congestion -- can't count on transit-oriented projects to help remake its center.
''The irony is that light rail is coming to the city that wants it most for development, not to the one that needs it most for traffic relief,'' the editorial observes, concluding: ''The logic for light rail in Virginia Beach was persuasive in 1999. Today, it is inescapable.'' -- Virginian-Pilot 9/9/2006
Bring back Jacksonville Traction Company, Trolleys, Heritage Rail, Commuter Rail, and make Jacksonville the Light Rail Capital of the South... Then jump back and watch us grow! Would you believe into the 1930's PALATKA had commuter trains and we didn't? True! Makes one wonder if we've always been asleep at the Controller Ocklawaha
Wow, I never realized that VaBeach finally realized the huge mistake they were making when they wanted to build BRT on that old rail line, as opposed to light rail that would be an extension of Norfolk's line. That's a powerful article to see a place just as sprawled out and autocentric as us admit that full blown light rail is cheaper than dedicated busways.
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I'm in Norfolk for a day. I haven't been here in ten years but I love something about the Elizabeth River and all the shipbuilding facilities as a part of its downtown area. A few random things I noticed last night.
1. The Marriott's 60,000 square foot convention center is the largest in DT Norfolk. It's smaller than the P.O. but dab smack in the middle of DT. The attached Marriott I'm staying at has around 400 rooms.
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2. A Hilton just opened up across the street last night. The local news called it a "game changer" for downtown. Lol, where have I heard that before?
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3. Granby Street is pretty nice. Lots of restaurants and bars for something like six straight blocks. In general, the downtown streets, landscape and buildings appear to be well taken care of.
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4. I probably won't get around to taking the Tide LRT (may drive out to check out VA Beach instead). However, I did notice a lot of new development along its path through DT.
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5. Waterside (the Landing's sibling) is closed. It reopens next month as a food hall.
http://watersidedistrict.com/
Hampton also has some nice features in their downtown, too. I remember that they used to have a weekly event in their main downtown park which generated some nice foot traffic, but that was 10 years ago so I'm not sure they still do it. They have the aquarium in their downtown, too. The Hampton Roads area is definitely spread out in a few dense nodes, but I think some of that is due to the Chesapeake Bay and all the waterways there.
Put 6 CVN's in Mayport, with the associated supporting companies, employees, nuclear engineering requirements, etc. and I bet the metro Jax area would probably support the same hotel volume as Norfolk.
The Virginia congressional delegation irrationally fights any and all efforts to move a single CVN to Mayport, while it brings a ridiculous military type of risk to our country, they are more worried about reducing a portion of the federal teat that props them up.
If the Norfolk economy is so fragile, that the movement of just one CVN would bring ruin, then they have other issues to worry about.
Probably so. The Hampton Roads economy doesn't appear to be as diverse. It's basically the port and military as the major anchors and then everything esle.
I visited Norfolk several times in the 70's and 80's, and lived there for two years from 1984 to 1986. It was kind of drab back then but looks like things have changed. It's downtown did have a flurry of bars back then and Granby Street was the place to shop and eat. Most all of the bars and taverns had a little restaurant in them in which seemed kind of odd to me back then cause I was living in Jacksonville all of those years (I am from Jacksonville), and almost none of the bars and taverns served burgers and fries. I lived on Little Creek Road which led to the Amphibious base. I didn't like the taxes in Virginia, and, you had to have two license plates (1 back and 1 forward), and two inspection stickers on your car. Lovely town and I would not go as far as to say that it's Jax' twin, but there are a lot of general/small similarities.