In the home zone around Oceana
By JON W. GLASS, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 22, 2005
Last updated: 9:04 AM

VIRGINIA BEACH — Since June, the Navy has sent nine letters to City Hall objecting to new housing developments being planned around Oceana Naval Air Station.

All but six of the 80 homes in the projects would be built in accident-potential zones, where the risk of a jet crash is greatest. And all but the same six units would be in the loudest jet-noise zone around the base.

“This is a blatant encroachment issue,” Capt. P.J. Lorge, who was acting as Oceana’s commanding officer, wrote June 27 about a 42-home development planned off London Bridge Road.

Building homes there, he said, is “an outright disregard for this Department of Defense facility and the health and welfare of future residents.”

City officials, however, say they can’t stop the construction.

That development and the other eight projects are being built “by right.” That means the underlying zoning on the property allows houses to be built there without City Council review or approval. Several of the sites have old homes on them that are being demolished and replaced with duplexes.

Potentially, thousands more homes could be built around Oceana outside the City Council’s purview.

The situation underscores the dilemma facing the city as it fights to save Oceana as the Navy’s East Coast master jet base:

There may be only so much the city can do to buffer Oceana from the development that has put the facility in the cross hairs of a federal base-closing commission.

“It’s going to have to be, do what we can where we can,” said James K. Spore, Virginia Beach’s city manager.

The Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission votes this week on whether to recommend closing the base.

Even if Oceana dodges the base-closing bullet, its future could hinge on the city’s ability to rein in growth that the Navy views as incompatible.

Top Navy officials have said their ideal solution – at an estimated cost of at least $1.4 billion – would be to build a new master jet base unhindered by homes and shopping malls.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chief of naval operations, said during a BRAC Commission hearing earlier this month that Oceana remains the best option for the “foreseeable future.” Development that has hemmed in the base – known as encroachment – “continues to impact our training” and “has grown worse over the last few years,” Mullen acknowledged.

But he expressed optimism that the recent adoption of a joint land-use study involving Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk and the Navy is a turning point.

The $1.4 billion question: Does it go far enough?

Some think not.

“The joint land-use study was a significant step in the right direction, but it doesn’t stop encroachment like the Navy was asking,” City Councilman Bob Dyer said.

The study, for example, offers no remedy for by-right development.

In addition, the recommendations do not apply to Oceana’s low jet-noise zone, even though the Navy views construction of new homes in the zone as incompatible with its mission. City officials say that residents in the low-noise zone are less likely to complain about loud jets, and that nearly 19,000 homes are already there.

Others, however, said the city and the state are moving decisively to address encroachment.

The City Council upped the ante last week when it announced plans to spend $15 million – with the state chipping in half – to buy out a disputed condominium site on Laskin Road. The 6-acre site, rezoned by the council nearly two years ago over the Navy’s objections, is in an accident-potential zone and in a noise zone where jets roar over at 114 decibels – louder than a rock concert.

The council also unveiled plans for an acquisition fund totaling an estimated $161 million over 20 years to buy land or development rights from willing sellers, primarily to preserve a key flight path between Oceana and its training field in Chesapeake.

The week before, three state lawmakers from Virginia Beach and Chesapeake had announced plans to enact the study recommendations into Virginia law and to create a program to help buy development rights in accident-potential zones.

The Navy itself intends to begin meeting with developers who are planning projects viewed as harmful to Oceana, hoping to persuade them to build something more compatible – another of the study’s recommendations.

All those steps will help protect Oceana in the long-term, said Bill Macali, a city deputy attorney. He is helping to draft a new zoning overlay district meant to reduce incompatible growth in Oceana’s highest noise zones.

“It’s probably a case where no one thing will be our silver bullet,” Macali said.

The Navy views by-right development as one of the most important issues looming. In several of the Navy’s recent letters objecting to the by-right projects, Capt. Tom Keeley, Oceana’s commanding officer, described the planned development as “further insidious encroachment upon our operations in support of homeland security.”

Cmdr. John C. Lauterbach Jr., command judge advocate at Oceana, said last week: “It is the issue for the future. The whole by-right regime is of significant concern.”

City officials say the issue will be hard to resolve. The options to address it are potentially expensive, legally risky and politically controversial.

A few of the nine by-right projects the Navy is now opposing are in areas of the city that city councils during the 1970s and ’80s rezoned to residential over the Navy’s objections. But most are in older sections, such as Oceana Gardens, that were zoned residential years before the Navy began flying high-performance fighter jets at Oceana.

Four of the projects are sandwiched among existing homes on undeveloped lots that went unnoticed until the region’s housing boom began unleashing an unquenchable demand for new homes.

The other five projects involve redevelopment, in which an outdated home is being torn down and replaced with duplexes, condos or larger single-family homes.

City officials said there’s not enough money available to buy all the property, even if the owners were willing to sell. The developers of the nine projects either declined to comment, could not be reached or did not return telephone calls .

R. Edward Bourdon Jr., an attorney who represents developers, said the city would be wasting tax dollars to try to buy out by-right development.

Purchasing land to preserve the Navy’s flyway between Oceana and the training field in Chesapeake “has some logic to it,” he said, because that area of the city is relatively undeveloped. But much of the potential by-right development, by virtue of its existing residential zoning, is surrounded by similar development, he said.

The council’s decision to buy the Laskin Road site was “ludicrous,” he said, because hundreds of homes already lie in the same accident-potential zone between the site and Oceana’s runway.

“No one can demonstrate any impact on operations at Oceana, either negative or positive, on whether that property is developed with condos or a hotel or left as open space,” he said. “They’d have to spend billions to remove the existing encroachment.”

The city estimates that 4,800 homes, assessed at an estimated $896 million, already exist in accident-potential zones around Oceana. About 12,000 additional housing units, assessed at $1.9 billion, are in the loudest noise zone.

Dyer said the city should investigate changing the zoning in the most critical areas to reduce future housing density, a process known as downzoning. It’s legal for localities in Virginia to downzone, but Bourdon guaranteed that the city would be sued because the action would reduce property values.

The city would have a high legal standard to meet, including proving that a change in circumstances warranted the downzoning. Dyer said the military’s role in the war on terror, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the Pentagon’s tougher stance against incompatible development starting in December 2002 might give the city a case.

At this point, Macali said, the city hopes to reduce housing density through voluntary rezonings that could increase property values, particularly at the resort.

At the Oceanfront, most of which is in a jet-noise zone, the Navy is concerned that the underlying zoning would allow about 9,000 additional homes. The city hopes to cap that at about 3,000 by offering incentives for owners willing to agree to a mixed zoning that would reduce the number of homes in exchange for shops, restaurants and offices. Those uses, Macali said, are compatible in the noise zones there.

“It’s hard to undo past mistakes,” he said, “but we’re really trying to do that.”

Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 222-5119 or jon.glass@pilotonline.com.