urbanlife

If the city lets this be built without retail along Laskin, that will be a major missed opportunity to create an active corridor. This building should be designed more like the Summer House Apartments that is only one block away from this site. This stretch of road should be mostly lined with 5 story apartment buildings with commercial spaces all along Laskin. Hopefully that gets corrected before they break ground with this building.

Since Norfolk has the Midtown tunnel, any type of "midtown" would probably be over by that....but then there is also a Midtown Shopping Center at Granby and Little Creek Rd, so who knows, Midtown could be anywhere you want Midtown to be.

I would have been a big ferry nerd if this would have happened back in the 90s when I lived there. I remember always taking the ferry to Portsmouth just for the fun of it to see the Norfolk skyline from that vantage point, and to have an excuse to ride on a boat.

The new Hilton looks like a really great addition to the city. It is also strange to me to see company names on most of the towers since none of the buildings in Portland do that.

They really should be required to have the whole north side of the building be dedicated to retail space along the first floor.

This would be a good time for an alternative weekly paper to move in and become the local press.

The biggest ORF can ever get will be the size of airport that San Diego has since both airports have similar restrictions. If ORF got rid of the South Lot and the East Lot, it would be possible to expand into a new terminal or two in that space depending how it was designed which would open up for more airlines to fly in and out of Norfolk. As for any major expansions beyond adding a new terminal wing would happen up in Richmond if they expanded their airport to be more on par with the size of Ronald Reagan International, but anything larger than that, I think Hampton Roads is just gonna have to deal with taking the road trip to Dulles International to for major flights.

It should be where a new arena goes as well as a new light rail line.

Wow, this is definitely not the Virginia Beach I grew up with. This really ups the bar for quality resorts along the oceanfront.

I seriously don't think I would have wanted to move away had Norfolk preserved these buildings and let the city grow around the existing urban fabric. I could easily see this street of buildings being a popular hipster street today.

I was just talking to my wife about this, I think we are going to see a number of malls go under in the coming years, especially after we see them lose a number of their anchor department stores. It would make sense to cut the building in half with an outdoor pedestrian corridor and tear down the department stores for redevelopment. I would imagine seeing residential towers going up in their places. It would also be nice to see the smaller garage on the northern side come down for redevelopment. But in the end, I think it would be good to see the McAthur Mall be integrated back into the city street grid while still being a retail center.

That makes the most sense for the region, the current airport in Norfolk could then either be turned into a private aircraft and small jets field or completely redeveloped.

Looking at this site again and the placement of the Icon tower, this makes the most sense to have a tower on the eastern side of the site and a 5-7 story platform building taking up the rest of the site because it wouldn't really take away views from the Icon and it would create more units with views to sell or rent in the new tower. It also doesn't have to be as tall as the Icon so the Icon could still have sweeping penthouse views....or the new tower could go big and be the new tallest building in the city and offer its own sweeping penthouse views. Just some thinking big thinking.

The building looks cool and would make a great addition, but I agree that retail along the street is needed to help make that area a more mixed use walkable area.

I get what you are saying here, especially since Granby once was closed to vehicles and it failed horribly. I think the difference is from then compared to today is the activity along that street. If you have a struggling street, closing it down to vehicles isn't going to magically make people show up and start walking around, which is what happened last time this was done. Today, from my brief visit since moving away that I made several years ago, it seemed like Granby was a much more pedestrian active street with a lot more active businesses. Since it currently has the pedestrian activity, closing the street for pedestrians and allowing bars and restaurants have more outdoor seating would help the area flourish and grow beyond the growth that has already happened. I would say now is the best time to close down Granby to vehicles and let it be a pedestrian/bicycle corridor. I would almost say that it should be done for the stretch between Brambleton and Virginia Beach Blvd as well, and bringing the Neon District into the mix. Now if you want to dream big dreams, I would say close all of Granby to vehicles until where it merges with Church and run a new light rail line straight up that road spurring off the existing line. Then have that light rail line run all the way up to Ocean View and giving Norfolk a light rail line that runs right up the middle of the city.