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Newport News City Center Project


urbanfan

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I dont think that we are being negative to TC or the southside in general, yet there is nothing wrong to critique the projects on both sides of the water. If anything, it has been the southside that has looked down on the peninsula (not here on the boards, but from people that I have contact with over the years). Naturally, we on this side of the water are very proud of the accomplishments that the peninsula has made the past five years or so. From retail to new urbanism to employment and even population growth, the peninsula is hitting a stride that will hopefully continue.

I myself will naturally give preference to NN, yet I consider myself also truly regional in mindset. I work in Chesapeake part time, went to both Ghent and DT Norfolk this past weekend alone, and will be going out to VB this weekend to Catch 31. Once we collectively act as a region (and that includes people on the southside) then we can truly keep moving foward. Otherwise, the region will polarize and lose clout.

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I don't think we really need to down City Walk and City Whatever; Port Warwick has already more than proved its worth and it's become a real destination. It's succeeded in ways that Bobby Freeman (the developer for ya'll Southsiders) probably never envisioned when he bought that tired old Eveready Battery Brownfield.

The greatest strengths that the projects on this side of the pond have, aside from that well-replicated community feel, is just the momentum of it all. I think Babiko got it right when he mentioned that - Newport News in 2000 is vastly different than the Newport News of 2006, and anyone who's seen it knows it to be true. Seeing that kind of positive change makes us believe that anything is possible here and that something very special and very real is taking place.

So sure CC doesn't have as many or as tall high rises as TC, and sure Port Warwick won't be as big as the new thingies in Norfolk. You can always throw more money at something to make it a little bigger and a little more expensive, but can you really emulate the raw intertia that the PW and CC projects have brought to Newport News? Does anyone realize that the Oyster Point business park was, only 20 years ago, a light-industrial backwater bordering a Dairy Farm? And do they know that the Dairy Farm is now a theater and the land where the cattle used to graze is the highest concentration of retail in Hampton Roads? Yeah.

The best part is that we know where we're going with this. Newport News has made it evident that, alongside a number of other important projects and plans, the general urbanization of Oyster Point in general is a real and working goal. It's not about constructing islands of character and walkability - it's about planting the seeds for a new kind of city in the heart of the retail/business district. We've got a shot to reinvent what Newport News is about and, by gum, we're taking it.

I think it says something about Newport News that even though we're seeing a number of exciting projects in Oyster Point like (but not limited to) CC, PW, Jefferson Commons, CNU, Monitor Center, Villages at Stoney Run, the Mall refurbishment, Airport expansion, Patrick Henry Marketplace (or whatever the new name is), etc; there are equally exciting things planned for downtown (Courthouse, Navy Apts), the East End (Mariners Watch and other various), and Lee Hall (Asheton). For my city, this is incredible!

I'm sure it would have been tempting for the city to try and move a lot of that investment, including the half-billion or so going into Asheton, into building high-rises that'll never make a cent (like oh ... 90% of the ones in China), but there's a maturity in this city that I find extremely impressive.

All in all, this isn't meant to be a chauvanistic polemic about the virtues of NN, but I am trying to say that WE ARE GOING NUTS WITH EXCITEMENT. Newport News was more or less written off some years ago, and now we have the moxy to turn heads nationally and create a place that has real, lasting appeal. If you think that downing on Newport News will make you feel better about your own project, fine. Constructive criticism is understandable and expected, but just trashing another city because it threatens your outlook needs to end.

I have to admit, I'm all for regionalism and for HR pride and such, but once in awhile (and not usually here, I'll admit), I'll get the snootiest comment from a Southsider that makes me think "screw the third crossing, I never go down there anyway." And its terrible that I do that, and especially so because I'm often extolling the wonders of HR (all of HR!) to people who aren't familiar with the region. I want to believe in regionalism, but I just can't accept a scheme that many southsiders take for granted: that Norfolk (or VA Beach, depending on who you're talking to, or both sometimes) is the nucleus of HR in the way that Washington, DC is to its metro or Atlanta to its metro. People can't swallow the idea that it's not nearly that simple here and that, functionally, Hampton Roads really is two separate markets with six major cities. Newport News will never lay down and accept being relegated as some suburb, because it isn't, and trends don't show it going that way. In a metro where the largest employer is in Newport News, the financial center is in Norfolk, the population gorilla is Virginia Beach, etc, that it's just not so simple as the spoke-and-wheel model that we're used to.

I think I'm done for now.

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Phew! You guys were busy last night. Good to see the uptick of activity in the peninsula forum. :thumbsup: I don't think anyone is downing the Peninsula or Vice versa. It's really that everyone is trying to compare apples and orages here and it's not working. CC and TC are 2 distinct projects with 2 very different goals in 2 quite different markets. You can't expect TC to have that sense of community yet because it's first apt tower just opened. The residential is just now under contruction. Resturants and office space were the first goals of this developer, now he's concentrating on the other. CC and PW simply started on the other end of the scale. Both projects will eventually have all components and meet in the middle somewhat but CC will always be Retail/ residential oriented while TC will remain Residential/Office oriented. It's just in the design of the projects.

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I don't think we really need to down City Walk and City Whatever; Port Warwick has already more than proved its worth and it's become a real destination. It's succeeded in ways that Bobby Freeman (the developer for ya'll Southsiders) probably never envisioned when he bought that tired old Eveready Battery Brownfield.

The greatest strengths that the projects on this side of the pond have, aside from that well-replicated community feel, is just the momentum of it all. I think Babiko got it right when he mentioned that - Newport News in 2000 is vastly different than the Newport News of 2006, and anyone who's seen it knows it to be true. Seeing that kind of positive change makes us believe that anything is possible here and that something very special and very real is taking place.

So sure CC doesn't have as many or as tall high rises as TC, and sure Port Warwick won't be as big as the new thingies in Norfolk. You can always throw more money at something to make it a little bigger and a little more expensive, but can you really emulate the raw intertia that the PW and CC projects have brought to Newport News? Does anyone realize that the Oyster Point business park was, only 20 years ago, a light-industrial backwater bordering a Dairy Farm? And do they know that the Dairy Farm is now a theater and the land where the cattle used to graze is the highest concentration of retail in Hampton Roads? Yeah.

The best part is that we know where we're going with this. Newport News has made it evident that, alongside a number of other important projects and plans, the general urbanization of Oyster Point in general is a real and working goal. It's not about constructing islands of character and walkability - it's about planting the seeds for a new kind of city in the heart of the retail/business district. We've got a shot to reinvent what Newport News is about and, by gum, we're taking it.

I think it says something about Newport News that even though we're seeing a number of exciting projects in Oyster Point like (but not limited to) CC, PW, Jefferson Commons, CNU, Monitor Center, Villages at Stoney Run, the Mall refurbishment, Airport expansion, Patrick Henry Marketplace (or whatever the new name is), etc; there are equally exciting things planned for downtown (Courthouse, Navy Apts), the East End (Mariners Watch and other various), and Lee Hall (Asheton). For my city, this is incredible!

I'm sure it would have been tempting for the city to try and move a lot of that investment, including the half-billion or so going into Asheton, into building high-rises that'll never make a cent (like oh ... 90% of the ones in China), but there's a maturity in this city that I find extremely impressive.

All in all, this isn't meant to be a chauvanistic polemic about the virtues of NN, but I am trying to say that WE ARE GOING NUTS WITH EXCITEMENT. Newport News was more or less written off some years ago, and now we have the moxy to turn heads nationally and create a place that has real, lasting appeal. If you think that downing on Newport News will make you feel better about your own project, fine. Constructive criticism is understandable and expected, but just trashing another city because it threatens your outlook needs to end.

I have to admit, I'm all for regionalism and for HR pride and such, but once in awhile (and not usually here, I'll admit), I'll get the snootiest comment from a Southsider that makes me think "screw the third crossing, I never go down there anyway." And its terrible that I do that, and especially so because I'm often extolling the wonders of HR (all of HR!) to people who aren't familiar with the region. I want to believe in regionalism, but I just can't accept a scheme that many southsiders take for granted: that Norfolk (or VA Beach, depending on who you're talking to, or both sometimes) is the nucleus of HR in the way that Washington, DC is to its metro or Atlanta to its metro. People can't swallow the idea that it's not nearly that simple here and that, functionally, Hampton Roads really is two separate markets with six major cities. Newport News will never lay down and accept being relegated as some suburb, because it isn't, and trends don't show it going that way. In a metro where the largest employer is in Newport News, the financial center is in Norfolk, the population gorilla is Virginia Beach, etc, that it's just not so simple as the spoke-and-wheel model that we're used to.

I think I'm done for now.

Well spoken! Or, I mean... Well typed!

I've learned to appreciate aspects of every city, not just within HR, but the whole world large and small. We have to swallow the big-city arrogance that infects so many of us. I have trouble with it as well. Living in DC, my standards of a sense of community and level of urbanizm have increased. It's healthy to have pride in your city but do it without spitting on fledgling cities. At one time, NYC, Miami and Chicago were small in scale. Less than a hundred years later NYC and Chicago are now two of the most recognized skylines in the world.

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Phew! You guys were busy last night. Good to see the uptick of activity in the peninsula forum. :thumbsup: I don't think anyone is downing the Peninsula or Vice versa. It's really that everyone is trying to compare apples and orages here and it's not working. CC and TC are 2 distinct projects with 2 very different goals in 2 quite different markets. You can't expect TC to have that sense of community yet because it's first apt tower just opened. The residential is just now under contruction. Resturants and office space were the first goals of this developer, now he's concentrating on the other. CC and PW simply started on the other end of the scale. Both projects will eventually have all components and meet in the middle somewhat but CC will always be Retail/ residential oriented while TC will remain Residential/Office oriented. It's just in the design of the projects.

Both are incorporating residential, office, retail, hotel and restaurant space. There are plans for taller office buildings in CC as well as high-rise living (Meridian). So it's not that one is more office or residential oriented then the other; the difference is the urban landscape and it's impact on a sense-of-community.

They are both equally under construction.

What we're discussing are the degrees of a sense-of-community both have/will have. It is clear even early in the devlopment of both that they're approaching urbanization very differently.

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  • 3 weeks later...
City Center in Newport News has three new tenants. Hi-Ho Silver, which has existing locations in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, sells sterling jewelry handcrafted in Mexico as well as silver-plated giftware. The Mole Hole, opening in June, will stock gifts, jewelry and home decorator items from across the world. The Ohm Spa Sanctuary, based on Hindu practice, will be a full-service day spa for men and women with six treatment rooms, a locker room and retail area.
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  • 2 months later...

I really like the sound of the 'opportunity block'. I really would love to see what they can do with it. I kind of hope it isn't a cinema, as AMC 24 and Regal Cinemas are nearby---too close for my tastes. I'd like to see the multi-floor department store with something atop it; offices and condos maybe? There is certainly the demand.

Love the article :)

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Well, The Point at City Center is set to start ramping up here shortly. The contractor for the Turner Building who was in our office yesterday at Port Warwick is finished with that project and will be moving equipment and trailers over to the site shortly. Good to see a large chunk of land being filled in. It should really help make the city Center Project seem much more dense, even though it already does.

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  • 9 months later...

$55 million earmarked for City Center buildup

NEWPORT NEWS -- Investors are poised to pump about $55 million in private money into City Center at Oyster Point in the years to come, the center's developer told City Council members Tuesday.

Most of the money will be invested in the center's next phase that includes a mixed-used development with a high-rise office building, apartments and more retail space. "We can celebrate a lot of successes at City Center," said Harvey L. Lindsay Jr. with Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate, the center's developer. "This has been a true private and public partnership."

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