re: #69 Targetpractice

The city’s sort of at a crossroads right now, as while the suburbs are starting to butt up against the Green Line, the city can’t really grow up like a lot of urban centers without drawing threats from the Navy to close down Oceana for good. And while the city council may say publicly that they think we can survive off tourism, privately everybody knows that if the Navy goes this place will be a ghost town within a decade. So while they want desperately to keep letting the developers build without constraint, they’re quickly running out of room to let them do so without violating the standing agreement with the rural folks.

Right after they built Lynnhaven Mall (the first Saturday it was open), we had an F-14 pilot who had a catastrophic mechanical failure in his aircraft on take-off. Rather than eject and maybe have the aircraft crash beyond the base, he intentionally drove it into the ground on the base to avoid massive loss-of-life at the mall just beyond the west boundary of the base.

The Navy raised holy hell about Muhammad Ali wanting to build a massive hotel on the east side of the base in the resort district. They came to agreement that Ali would build the hotel only 1/3 the original planned height.

Oceana’s days are numbered if Va Beach continues to allow development around the air station. I don’t think the Navy is going to want to move out to Fentress in the Dismal Swamp (plus NALF Fentress would require a whole lot of upgrades to equal NAS Oceana).