God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
–Reinhold Niebuhr
About 18 months ago, I asked what should be done with Waterside. In the interim, we seen two bars shut down by the venue’s landlord, teen dances suspended, and one of the last large tenants consider closing its restaurant. The editorial cartoon above (click to enlarge) appeared in Sunday’s Virginian-Pilot and sums up quite nicely that the question I posed has not been answered.
This comes as the city is trying to figure out how to make downtown more “family friendly.” An article in Saturday’s paper takes a look at nearby Granby Street, and says that the city is envious that Virginia Beach has “evolved into a family-oriented destination for dining out.” There is this vague notion amongst our council that if we just try hard enough, Norfolk can be a suburb just like Virginia Beach. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Norfolk and Virginia Beach are two different animals, one urban, the other more of a bedroom community. Not to knock Virginia Beach but where, exactly, is downtown Virginia Beach? It seems they are trying to make it Town Center, but if you have to do business in the city, it’s not there. Instead, you have to drive to Princess Anne, down a two-lane road, in order to get to the city offices. Norfolk, on the other hand, has a well-defined downtown. You can access city offices and walk to lunch.
Instead of trying to be what we aren’t, Norfolk should embrace what we are: a vibrant, diverse, urban core. Everything we do should flow from that. No, we shouldn’t allow the thugs to take over – and we should take appropriate action to make it clear that such behavior will not be tolerated. But we cannot sanitize things so much that we are nothing but a series of chain restaurants providing the same faux atmosphere that one can get anywhere. One can attend the opera and head over to Orapax for a great Greek salad. It’s those experiences that make Norfolk great, not another Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t strive to be the best that we can be. We should. We should be try to be the best at everything: the best schools, the best neighborhoods, the best local government. Working to be the best that we can be should be the overall goal of our city.
The wisdom to know the difference between who we are and who we aren’t- that’s what we need from our leaders. And once we have that, a plan for Waterside – or Granby Street, or anything else – will not only not be a blank piece of paper, but an achievable dream.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
one could go on till they were blue in the face about the lack of direction that the city council has shown towards waterside. if there were business’s that were in place to take the vacancies by the displaced clubs then that would have at least shown some forethought and a semblence of a plan. is this really the best time to cut the legs out from under revenue generating business’s when the budget’s stretched so thin? how much money does an empty space generate? why on earth would anyone want to open a business in an area that has the record that waterside does with it’s tennants? All i keep seeing however, is all this talk of making the area more family friendly but no business’s to replace the ones being evicted or banned from opening, instead i’m seeing less and less reason to even bother going anywhere near waterside unless it’s on the way to somewhere that i actually would like to spend my money at. i’m all for family friendly but there has to be some variety. i didn’t even really like jillian’s but at least it was something other than the G rated theme that the city council is clumsily attempting to cultivate. frankly i’d like to see something open with a little more excitement and isn’t on the bar taskforce aka “the fun police”‘s hit list.
Your post mentions everything but Waterside. No one’s walking to Waterside from the Opera. Anyone from Virginia Stage is going to Granby St.
City offices are daytime, and that’s not what Norfolk officials are talking about. They want evening dollars, so being close to a courthouse means absolutely nothing.
The problem is that most of the nighttime entertainment venues have nothing closeby for before/after except for Granby st.
So, what do you want done with Waterside? If not Bar Row, then what? It’s not close enough to anything to get spillover foot traffic after 5 pm.
I gather you haven’t been downtown lately. There is enough housing down there that a civic league has been formed. It’s sitting right next to Town Point Park and plenty of folks are down there after 5pm.
I’ve lived in Norfolk long enough to see that there is one constant: change. Remember when they decided to make Granby St a pedestrian mall? Then they tore it up and let the cars back on.
Waterside is no different. It’s undergone a couple of different “themes,” if you will, since it first opened. Instead of changing what is it every few years, pick a theme and stick with it. At least there will be some consistency of clientele.
No suggestions by you?
Only that the leadership makes up its mind.
When I arrived in Norfolk in 1983, Waterside was the shining centerpiecve of downtown redevelopment, a “festival marketplace” chockablock with worthwhile restaurants and one-of-a-kind shops. An RG Moore-built centerpiece, designed and built to echo structures on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. This was at a time when the abovementioned Granby Mall was an eyesore, and urban living was an occasional adventure only for those on the cutting edge.
This city has made some decent investments that have paid off– MacArthur Mall comes to mind. Don’t know and am not competent to evaluate whether running off the entertainment venues was a good idea. But with the density of full time residents downtown, coupled with a redesigned Town Point Park and revitalized Nauticus, it seems that there might be real potential for a re-imagined “festival marketplace” for the 21st century.
I hope those who would turn it into more condos don’t get the last word.
I miss Bacalis’ hot dog place (Used to be just down from the MacArthur Memorial).
One lesson for Norfolk an similar cities, is to never again create a massive housing project adjacent to the city center. Although well intentioned, those “Great Society” projects were too concentrated and became crime magnets.
New Orleans has battled with the same problem since the Johnson era.
The best thing that could happen to downtown Norfolk would be to abolish prohibition for the young sailors by returning the beer drinking age to eighteen. These young men can be drafted and take a bullet for our country, but they can’t be trusted with a 3.2 Beer?
It would be great to see small businesses come back to Waterside. I love to go to D’egg and have lunch and would welcome going to waterside to support locally owned small businesses.