Pembroke Mall Revelopment (Ongoing-Phase 1)

[vdogg]

Folks, we got hotel and office tower renderings. Stand by...

Getting about 24-25 floors on the tallest office tower. 5 phases total, first 3 begin this year. Office towers are the final 2 phases.

[HRVA]

This looks great & love the pedestrian crossing over VB Blvd. Really leaves a lot of surface parking - hopefully for future development. I do find the placement of one of the office towers interesting. Appears to be within the old Sears footprint so curious about the recent Decisions lease for that space. 

[BFG]

That office reminds me of the Dollar Tree HQ. I love it!

[vdogg]

3 hours ago, vdogg said:

Folks, we got hotel and office tower renderings. Stand by...

Getting about 24-25 floors on the tallest office tower. 5 phases total, first 3 begin this year. Office towers are the final 2 phases.

I'm noticing "Hilton Dual Brand Hotel" on the hotel rendering. I'm still excited for the hotel, but I fail to see how a Hilton brand hotel can be considered "new to the area".

That top is obviously another rooftop bar though. Very excited to have something like that at Pembroke. Both Orion and Grain are fantastic, hopefully this is on the same level.

2 hours ago, BFG said:

That office reminds me of the Dollar Tree HQ. I love it!

It actually looks a lot like One of the Dominion Energy office towers in Richmond. Hopefully it has a similar height.

[urbanvb]

This is awesome. I love especially how urban the rendering of the hotel is. Looks like something out of NYC.

[urbanlife]

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. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by urbanlife

[Qdeathstar]

The pedestrian bridge will probably get cut…

[Lluck002]

On 3/1/2022 at 5:12 PM, vdogg said:

I'm noticing "Hilton Dual Brand Hotel" on the hotel rendering. I'm still excited for the hotel, but I fail to see how a Hilton brand hotel can be considered "new to the area".

That top is obviously another rooftop bar though. Very excited to have something like that at Pembroke. Both Orion and Grain are fantastic, hopefully this is on the same level.

It actually looks a lot like One of the Dominion Energy office towers in Richmond. Hopefully it has a similar height.

Well, I suppose we can narrow it down to Hilton Worldwide’s full-service brands that would be new to Hampton Roads. Though dual-branded properties tend to be one full-service brand and one select-service brand, or two select-service brands.

Hilton’s full-service brands that currently do not have a location in Hampton Roads are Waldorf Astoria, Conrad, LXR, Canopy, Signia, and Tempo. Our market likely can’t support Waldorf Astoria or LXR. I could see Conrad maybe since it’s at the JW Marriott tier and not quite the Ritz-Carlton tier like Waldorf Astoria is. Canopy, Signia, and Tempo all would fit well except they’re very new brands with only select locations so far. Perhaps this property will be one of the first in any of those brands’ portfolios. I personally like Tempo’s vibe.

[vdogg]

Unless this is a typo, it appears that the height of the apartments has grown somewhat (now 12-stories). I believe it was originally supposed to be an 8 or 9-story building. Below is a portion of the term sheet being voted on today.

 

[baobabs727]

3 hours ago, vdogg said:

Unless this is a typo, it appears that the height of the apartments has grown somewhat (now 12-stories). I believe it was originally supposed to be an 8 or 9-story building. Below is a portion of the term sheet being voted on today.

 

Very cool. But wait. What vote today? April’s planning mtg. was last week.  Council meets on Tuesdays. I’m confused lol. 
 

edit:  Nvm. Today is Tues!  Ugh. It’s been one of those weeks already lol. Will be fascinating to see what happens. I know at least one developer who openly opposed this. 

Edited April 19, 2022 by baobabs727

[vdogg]

32 minutes ago, baobabs727 said:

Very cool. But wait. What vote today? April’s planning mtg. was last week.  Council meets on Tuesdays. I’m confused lol. 
 

edit:  Nvm. Today is Tues!  Ugh. It’s been one of those weeks already lol. Will be fascinating to see what happens. I know at least one developer who openly opposed this. 

The term sheet was on the consent agenda, so it will sail through. The VBDA now needs to draw up documents and the final contract will be voted on by council at a later date.

[vdogg]

The money for the parking decks was approved. They are now free to proceed to construction on the first phases. If I recall correctly the game plan is to break ground this summer.

https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/virginia-beach/vb-approves-24m-to-help-build-parking-garages-at-pembroke-mall/

Just now, vdogg said:

The money for the parking decks was approved. They are now free to proceed to construction on the first phases. If I recall correctly the game plan is to break ground this summer.

https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/virginia-beach/vb-approves-24m-to-help-build-parking-garages-at-pembroke-mall/

That said, there's already site work occurring where the senior living apartments will be.

[mistermetaj]

On 4/19/2022 at 1:29 PM, vdogg said:

Unless this is a typo, it appears that the height of the apartments has grown somewhat (now 12-stories). I believe it was originally supposed to be an 8 or 9-story building. Below is a portion of the term sheet being voted on today.

 

I like the idea of bringing a more urban atmosphere and replacing the mall, but I don't see how this is going to integrate with Town Center and complete a cohesive urban fabric. We need roads and crosswalks across VA Beach blvd to connect this area. Right now, it feels like a town center next to Town Center. The city would have to make a large investment in this gridding, but I think it's as worth while an investment as a garage.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2022 by mistermetaj

[BFG]

34 minutes ago, mistermetaj said:

I like the idea of bringing a more urban atmosphere and replacing the mall, but I don't see how this is going to integrate with Town Center and complete a cohesive urban fabric. We need roads and crosswalks across VA Beach blvd to connect this area. Right now, it feels like a town center next to Town Center. The city would have to make a large investment in this gridding, but I think it's as worth while an investment as a garage.

 

 

They might want to revisit the elevated walkway idea from about 15 years ago. VB Blvd. is too busy to navigate if they plan to create more city blocks. 

[vdogg]

4 hours ago, BFG said:

They might want to revisit the elevated walkway idea from about 15 years ago. VB Blvd. is too busy to navigate if they plan to create more city blocks. 

There's an elevated walkway included in the plans for the hotel.

4 hours ago, mistermetaj said:

I like the idea of bringing a more urban atmosphere and replacing the mall, but I don't see how this is going to integrate with Town Center and complete a cohesive urban fabric. We need roads and crosswalks across VA Beach blvd to connect this area. Right now, it feels like a town center next to Town Center. The city would have to make a large investment in this gridding, but I think it's as worth while an investment as a garage.

 

 

These parcels are the only parcels they own. They, or the city, would need to buy the other parcels in order to be able to develop those.

[Lluck002]

12 hours ago, mistermetaj said:

I like the idea of bringing a more urban atmosphere and replacing the mall, but I don't see how this is going to integrate with Town Center and complete a cohesive urban fabric. We need roads and crosswalks across VA Beach blvd to connect this area. Right now, it feels like a town center next to Town Center. The city would have to make a large investment in this gridding, but I think it's as worth while an investment as a garage.

 

 

I agree. The images in the Comprehensive Plan show a cohesive gird of streets. I will bring up this disconnect with our Comprehensive Planning Administrator and try to start a push to bring this vision back into focus.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Lluck002

[baobabs727]

My queries:

Utterly cost prohibitive? Not the best use of taxpayer dollars? Privately-owned land-devouring?  Potentially visually boring and physically exhausting to the user, thus leading to reduced lingering time and diminished sales per sq. ft.?

Additionally, there is this:

" This approach [disrupting the imposition of the grid and rejecting pure linearity of layout] contradicts a train of thought that goes something like this: we want our retail-anchored mixed-use destinations to be lively; cities are lively; cities have grids, therefore a grid will create the liveliness of an urban district.  But cities aren't lively because they have grids - they're lively because they have people."

(Selected text from:  https://www.fieldpaoli.com/ideas/thinking-outside-the-grid  by Yann Taylor, which I found to be a rather interesting read.)

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by baobabs727

[mistermetaj]

1 hour ago, baobabs727 said:

My queries:

Utterly cost prohibitive? Not the best use of taxpayer dollars? Privately-owned land-devouring?  Potentially visually boring and physically exhausting to the user, thus leading to reduced lingering time and diminished sales per sq. ft.?

Additionally, there is this:

" This approach [disrupting the imposition of the grid and rejecting pure linearity of layout] contradicts a train of thought that goes something like this: we want our retail-anchored mixed-use destinations to be lively; cities are lively; cities have grids, therefore a grid will create the liveliness of an urban district.  But cities aren't lively because they have grids - they're lively because they have people."

(Selected text from:  https://www.fieldpaoli.com/ideas/thinking-outside-the-grid  by Yann Taylor, which I found to be a rather interesting read.)

 

 

 

 

It's an interesting article that you posted. Whether it's a grid as I superimposed over the site or a sort of "mesh" design as the article seems to be advocating for, the elements of walkability, connectivity, and density are still there. It's a tomAto - tomato kind of thing.

My issue with the Pembroke development as it is currently isn't the lack of an orthogonal grid as it is a lack of connectivity to town center. It feels wholly separated by both a large boulevard followed by a large amount of parking. A well connected midtown of any kind will need streets, sidewalks, cross walks, etc, so going to the Pembroke Mall area is more a visit to midtown Va Beach and less a visit to a faux urban Disneyland.

Regardless, I am beyond happy something is going on there with this kind of vision, I just hope the city is able to facilitate a broader more cohesive buildout over time.

[baobabs727]

2 hours ago, mistermetaj said:

It's an interesting article that you posted. Whether it's a grid as I superimposed over the site or a sort of "mesh" design as the article seems to be advocating for, the elements of walkability, connectivity, and density are still there. It's a tomAto - tomato kind of thing.

My issue with the Pembroke development as it is currently isn't the lack of an orthogonal grid as it is a lack of connectivity to town center. It feels wholly separated by both a large boulevard followed by a large amount of parking. A well connected midtown of any kind will need streets, sidewalks, cross walks, etc, so going to the Pembroke Mall area is more a visit to midtown Va Beach and less a visit to a faux urban Disneyland.

Regardless, I am beyond happy something is going on there with this kind of vision, I just hope the city is able to facilitate a broader more cohesive buildout over time.

Well, the pedestrian bridge would help with that issue somewhat. Perhaps some would advocate for putting that section of VB BLVD on a "road diet," or a "BLVD" diet, as it were.  Not sure how you'd do that with such a large volume of traffic along that stretch, however.

In terms of fostering pedestrian access and walkability, Mr. Yann made the intriguing argument that, in practice, the New Urbanism movement's preference for rigid street grids actually ceded design control over to the vehicular traffic engineers who would fret over traffic flow and on-street parking rather than allowing the organic shapes and forms of any existing topography, architecture and infrastructure to foster experiential walkability for the pedestrian user.  

[Lluck002]

On 4/21/2022 at 8:01 AM, NFKjeff said:

I agree as well, but it seems like the task of purchasing all of the extra plots and building the required infrastructure would be very expensive for the city. When developing a space as important and relevant as a downtown it is not good to be penny wise and pound foolish but that seems to be the VB MO.

I wish Virginia Beach had the clout to attract developers, affording the city to impose greater design and development standards on them without scaring them off. 

For example, Fairfax County’s Tysons Comprehensive Plan calls for developers to hold the responsibility of completing their portions of the overall urban street grid as they develop each parcel. Developers there WANT to build and COMPETE to build, so they don’t mind meeting these conditions. And you’re starting to see the street grid rise from former seas of surface parking lots, eventually connecting in a cohesive manner. I attached a photo that illustrates what’s happening, along with the overall street grid plan for Tysons. This strategy would do wonders in the Pembroke Strategic Growth Area to solve the feeling of disconnect between the different developments.

I’m actually curious how the redevelopments at Pembroke Mall are getting away with such large setbacks without really creating new public streets since CBC zoning mandates buildings be up to the lot line on street frontage. I guess they are counting internal and/or future “streets” towards that requirement? I’ll have to look into it.

[urbanlife]

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.

[Lluck002]

9 hours ago, urbanlife said:

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.

I wouldn’t even mind if they chose to develop akin to Tysons Corner Center or Tysons Galleria, because it’d have true mixed-use skyscrapers, no surface parking lots, and a thriving, high-end, still-open shopping mall at the center, with skybridges linking everything directly to a Metrorail station. 

Of course, pursuing a development style like the Boro, Reston Town Center, Mosaic District, or heck, even Virginia Beach Town Center would be preferable haha.

They really should extend Broad Street in both directions and through the mall site so that a parallel route can ease congestion on Virginia Beach Boulevard. Then the Boulevard could go on a road diet. Oh yeah, and Light Rail, of course. Tysons is a great example of a development boom that happens when you bring quality rapid transit to an area. It used to see maybe one skyscraper a year being built but now there are like at least a dozen per year under construction.

Edited April 25, 2022 by Lluck002

[baobabs727]

People make a community, not planners and not street grids.

The street grid is not the holy grail, the be all and end all.  Might be time to get out of the textbooks and open one's mind to the hard reality that VB is a tertiary market.  Thinking outside of the orthogonal box(es) and moving beyond the grid, especially where there are pre-existing structures and limited dollars/limited investment potential, is the only way to get what we all want around here in terms of  achieving some semblance of urbanity.  

Unless, that is, you simply seek to remain ideologically pure whilst achieving nothing.    

When there is near-unanimity of thought in the planning community universe--or in any field of study, work, etc., for that matter--perhaps one should start looking to emulate the salmon.   

 

Edited April 26, 2022 by baobabs727

[mintscraft56]

Any one know what they will do with all that spare parking land? They seem very focused on the centre of the site but the rest looks to be left out of any development.

[Lluck002]

15 hours ago, baobabs727 said:

People make a community, not planners and not street grids.

The street grid is not the holy grail, the be all and end all.  Might be time to get out of the textbooks and open one's mind to the hard reality that VB is a tertiary market.  Thinking outside of the orthogonal box(es) and moving beyond the grid, especially where there are pre-existing structures and limited dollars/limited investment potential, is the only way to get what we all want around here in terms of  achieving some semblance of urbanity.  

Unless, that is, you simply seek to remain ideologically pure whilst achieving nothing.    

When there is near-unanimity of thought in the planning community universe--or in any field of study, work, etc., for that matter--perhaps one should start looking to emulate the salmon.   

 

I get what you’re trying to say but street grids facilitate walkable, human-scale city blocks. The streets don’t have to be completely straight and they don’t all need to facilitate automobiles. Creating uniform rectangular blocks is just a better use of land in most cases. A grid that includes an abundance of pedestrian streets is also something to think about.

I’m a professional Urban Designer, yes with a degree in Urban Planning, but we didn’t have our heads buried in textbooks… like, at all. We learned mostly from case studies and design charettes and data.

One thing you need to remember is that yes, people make a community. But design influences their behaviors and preferences which, in turn, influences design of their community. The modern field of Planning advocates for certain principles of built environment design because they are proven to be the best. These best practices in design will influence the community to create a positive version of the cycle I mentioned above. A lot of community members don’t realize they want things like mixed-use, transit, and density because they simply haven’t properly experienced those things and therefore don’t realize the benefits they provide, so they just keep asking for wider roads, more parking, and more strip malls. The change has to start somewhere, and that can be initiated by Planners.