BY ALEX MARSHALL
COVER STORY
PORT FOLIO MAGAZINE
Sometimes I like to mull over the choices we have taken as a region and then, in a masochistic mood, try to pick the absolutely worst one, savoring the special flavor of failed dreams and paths not taken.
My personal favorite for all-time blooper is Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Suffolk opting to split off in the 1960s into mega land-area cities and cut off Norfolk’s expansion. In one fell swoop, we separated rich fro poor, city from suburb, growth from decay, and thus insured that it would be vastly more difficult to tackle common problems and challenges together. We built a political fence through our common garden.
But vying for second place is the decision made 30 years ago not to build a big regional airport out in Chesapeake.
For you see, Norfolk was not doomed to have a tiny airport with terrible service. From 1968 to the early 70s, a debate bubbled across the region. It was clear the old Norfolk airport was outmoded. What should be done?
As Norfolk prepared to expand the old airport off Military Highway, a vocal lobby emerged, saying no, that was the wrong decision. They advocated building a new and larger airport out in Chesapeake or Suffolk that would serve both sides of the water, and position the region to capture more business growth.
It didn’t happen. Despite accumulating voices, Norfolk, recently burned by its suburban neighbors over annexation, stuck to its guns. If needed, we can move the airport later, its leaders said. That didn’t happen. We missed a chance, and it never came again.
This was a crucial decision. With different choices and some luck, we could have had a large regional airport just a short drive from downtown, with direct jet service to New York and other major cities. Our economic development would have been ratcheted up a notch, as we played with the Charlottes and the Clevelands, rather than the Winston-Salems and Lexingtons.
What more, if the region had managed to cooperate to finance and build a big regional airport, the Southside would have been knitted to the Peninsula and the region made one in more than name. Cooperating on an airport might have set the stage for joining together on universities, roads, stadiums, and things like tackling poverty and crime.
Even the very culture of the area might have changed because new ideas and people would have more easily come into our region.
But that didn’t happen. Norfolk expanded its small airport, Newport News eventually expanded Patrick Henry, and the region was stuck with two small airports without a lot of market power.
“It really cast us inexorably in being a second-rate community,” said businessman and community leader Andrew Fine.
“Hindsight is 20-20, but I’d be surprised if anyone didn’t think that wouldn’t have been a better approach,” said George Crawley, a member of the Norfolk Airport Authority and former assistant city manager of Norfolk. “That might have been the piece that solidified us as a region.”
The airport story shows how our fragmentation as a region probably directly hurt our future. Although this is often said, rarely do you see it so clearly as in the tale of a big airport not built.
Somewhere, Hunter Hogan, that wiley, Yoda-like real-estate salesman, is smiling, his grin and voice triumphantly saying “I told you so.”
For it was Hogan that resolutely pushed to build a regional airport outside of Norfolk proper that would serve both the Southside and Peninsula. True, he no doubt would have somehow made a lot of money off of it. Hogan, one of the founders of Goodman-Segar-Hogan, was an excellent businessman. But he also spoke repeatedly about the long-term health of the area.
“Norfolk is being sold short; the whole Tidewater community is being sold short because we are not being far-sighted enough,” Hogan said in 1969. He would keep saying this over the next few years.
The site Hogan and his allies were pushing was on the edge of the Dismal swamp in Chesapeake. {SEE LOCATOR MAP?} Roughly at the apex of a triangle, it would be easy to access to from both sides of the water. It would be close enough from the Norfolk downtown– 12 miles — to be reached easily, but far enough out to handle larger planes and future growth.
Twelve miles from downtown. It’s funny how far that seemed to people at the time. Now, new airports are built more than 30 miles outside town. The new Denver airport is a 45 minute drive from the center city.
Hogan’s plan and site had difficulties.
There were questions even in those environmentally-unaware days about building in or near a swamp. It unquestionably would not be allowed today.
James Crumbley, 77, executive director of the airport at the time and former head of Virginia International Terminals, said he and a group traveled out to the proposed site when it was under consideration.
“We went down there one day, and we broke off a big limb, and you could push it 5 feet into the ground,” Crumbley said. “You would have had to pile all the runways.”
Of course, Hogan insisted that the Dismal Swamp site was just one option. After all, Chesapeake, which is now covered with subdivisions, was then mostly open fields.
Crumbley defends the decision to keep the old airport site. There was no guarantee that we would have captured more traffic with a bigger airport, he says. Coastal cities like Hampton Roads are rarely chosen as hubs because planes cannot draw traffic from all sides, he said.
Roy B. Martin Jr., who was mayor at the time and opposed moving the airport, said finances, location and future usage all pointed away from a new regional airport.
“Who would have built it?” Martin asked in a recent interview. “Where would the money have come from? You weren’t talking $20 million. I think the idea was good, but there was no highways there. The state wasn’t going to help.
“None of the other cities came to the table and said OLet’s go do it.’ I never remember a push to move the airport” by the other cities.
Perhaps, but the record seems to show otherwise. Elected officials and community leaders from all the surrounding cities were reported voicing support for an expanded regional airport. Virginia Beach Councilman Lawrence E. Marshall was quoted in The Virginian-Pilot saying, “We should look beyond 20 years and invest in a tremendously large international airport.” Chesapeake Mayor G. A. Treakle came out in favor of it. Even one of Norfolk senators, Peter K. Babalas, urged then Gov. Linwood Holton to use “benevolent authority to force Southeastern Virginia localities to accept creation of regional airport.”
And sure, a $50 million to $100 million new airport — which was the figures loosely thrown around — would have been difficult to finance. But one of the advocates of a new airport was Edwin MacKethan, a trust officer for Virginian National Bank and more importantly, the guy who helped set up the bond issues for the $200 million Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. If the guy who financed the bridge tunnel was on board, maybe financing a regional airport was not out of the question.
Other groups came out against the old airport. Pilots said it was too close to existing schools, like Azalea Garden and Landsdale Elementary. Landing at the airport required a steep angle of descent that was not optimal. They urged a new airport be built farther out.
Norfolk resisted. A consultant the airport hired recommended expanding on the old site. Airport officials pointed out that both New York’s La Guardia and Washington’s National sat on sites no bigger than Norfolk’s airport. The consultant confidently predicted 4 million passengers annually by 1990.
Present traffic in 1999: Under 3 million — below its traffic in 1984. By comparison, Charlotte went from 5.5 million passengers in 1982 to 22 million passengers in 1996. The Virginian-Pilot, which uneasily arbitrated the debate in its pages, seemed to sense that the region was making the wrong decision, but seemed not to have the nerve to oppose Norfolk.
“Perhaps Tidewater would be better served by a new and larger airport elsewhere. The Port Authority believes otherwise and . . .at this point it would be asking much to demand that the authority back up and start over,” said a 1969 editorial.
It was classic Virginian-Pilot. Squishy. It vaguely supported the status-quo, while leaving you with the feeling that something was being lost.
Another Virginian-Pilot editorial advised:
“Hampton Roads may in time attract a significant amount of long-haul traffic. Meanwhile, Patrick Henry and Norfolk Regional must base their plans on what is probable. It is improbable that either will become a major airport. And simply building a major facility is not the way to enter the big time. Demand must be there. Dullas International Airport, with its sweeping runways and uncluttered setting, is scandalously underused.”
Hindsight is easy, but it’s amusing how wrong this editorial is. In fact, Dullas would eventually be swamped and is now being expanded. And notice the passivity of the editorial voice. It captures much of our faults as a region. It doesn’t say, “If we build a big airport, we can capture much of the long-haul traffic.” It essentially says, “We should only build a big airport if we have captured the long-haul traffic.” Which of course, would never happen without the right runways and facilities.
It seems obvious now that Norfolk chose the wrong path and so hurt the future of itself and the entire region. Norfolk proceeded with its plans even though Piedmont Airlines — the predecessor of USAir — was sniffing around for a hub airport — WHICH EVENTUALLY WENT TO CHARLOTTE. It proceeded even though it knew larger jet planes could not land there, although later technological advances would reverse this. It built it even though it put civilian airplanes too close to military traffic.
Why did it persist on such a wrong-headed path? It’s here we see how one good turn begets another, and how the suburban cities urge to separate themselves from Mother Norfolk would come back to haunt them.
At the time of the airport debate, just a few years had passed since old Princess Anne county had “double-crossed” Norfolk and merged with the town of Virginia Beach to become a separate city. Nansemond and Norfolk counties soon followed suit, becoming Suffolk and Chesapeake.
Can you blame Norfolk for not exactly being eager to relinquish control of one of its few remaining assets — its airport — to a bunch of folks who had just recently told it in effect, “We’ll take your jobs, money and water, and you can have your problems with schools, race and retail flight.”
“I think the argument turned on that the City Council did not want it moved out of Norfolk,” said businessman Edward Power Sr., who was a close associate of Hogan. “It was the old story is that each city wanted to protect its own image, and not share a large asset with another community.”
In effect, the decision not to move the airport really was a continuation of the decision by the suburban areas not to be a part of Norfolk. We can’t have your suburbs, you can’t have our airport.
The new expanded airport opened in January 1973 to much fanfare. The new terminal, sitting on the edge of the Botanical Gardens, was declared one of the prettiest in the country.
Hogan, speaking before it opened, labeled it “A first-class terminal with a fifth-class runway.”
Paying for the $30 million expansion wasn’t difficult. The airlines paid for it through higher landing fees. Of course, by not paying then, we may be paying now. A state study in 1997 concluded Virginians pay 20 percent more than the national average for air travel, and that our fares have risen in recent years while declining slightly in the rest of the nation.
NEW SECTION {capitalize first few words} Twenty-five years pass. Norfolk International is a nice, pleasant airport. It is also a very small one. In national rankings based on number of passengers travelling annually, Norfolk International has slipped from 43rd in 1973, to 53rd in 1982, to 60th today.
Construction is now underway on a $60 million new arrivals terminal, and a $35 million additional parking garage. THIS WILL EXPAND THE NUMBER OF TICKET COUNTERS AND LANDING GATES, AND SO IMPROVE THE AIRPORT’S COMPETITIVENESS. But these are unlikely to radically change the airport’s national position, because it IS STILL HEMMED IN AND LACKS ROOM TO EXPAND RUNWAYS. THE AIRPORT LACKS PARALLEL RUNWAYS, WHICH ARE NECESSARY TO LAND JETS IN HIGH VOLUME.
THE AIRPORT MAY EVENTUALLY BUILD A PARALLEL RUNWAY. BUT BECAUSE VIRGINIA BEACH HAS BUILT ITS INDUSTRIAL PARK UP TO THE EDGE OF THE AIRPORT, THE FUTURE PARALLEL RUNWAY WILL NOT BE THE REQUIRED 800 FEET FROM THE ORIGINAL RUNWAY. BECAUSE OF THIS, THE RUNWAYS WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BE USED FOR SIMULATANEOUS LANDINGS, ONE OFFICIAL SAID. LACK OF COOPERATION BETWEEN THE TWO CITIES ON THIS ISSUE STRANGLED THE AIRPORT’S CAPACITY FOR GROWTH.
Our main airport is still pretty. The rectangular terminal is majestic, and is enhanced by its frame of trees and lush gardens. It is also convenient. You can drive right up to it, and get from car-door to plane without jogging down endless corridors or navigating multiple access lanes.
But the rest of your voyage is likely to be hellish. Odds are, you’ll find yourself crammed into a tiny cylinder of an airplane, transferring to get any destination beyond a stone’s throw away, and being served last and least in everything.
Airline service is lousy all over the country. It’s not just Norfolk that puts up with cramped seating, aging planes, discriminatory pricing and monopolistic airlines. They are largely the product of airline deregulation which some experts are labeling a failure.
But as airlines become semi-monopolies ruling over land-locked fiefdoms, it’s the little guys like Norfolk that suffer most. Stories of air travel out of Norfolk sound like those from a war zone or some natural disaster. No direct flights. Horrible layovers. Horrible prices. No respect.
Virginian-Pilot columnist Dave Addis, who apparently leaves his beloved car sometimes for a plane, hit nerves recently when he pointed out that airline service in Bulgaria was better than that in Norfolk.
Recently I was in the Newark airport, changing planes of course, on my way back to Norfolk from distant Boston. I had to shlep my way to gate 133 in a dim rusty corner of the airport. There, an official ushered us out a door, where we found ourselves on a sidewalk in the rain. We were boarded onto a Greyhound-style bus that then drove us to the tiny plane on the runway that would take us to Norfolk. It was very clear where we were on the status ladder.
Business theorist Ted Goranson, who lives in Virginia Beach, recently missed his plane from New York to Italy for an important meeting. Winds and rain in New York shut out the tiny planes leaving Norfolk, although regular full-size jets were landing fine. Goranson remembers standing in line next to a businessman from Brazil who had just missed his own flight back. He was vigorously scratching the area off his list of potential sites.
More and more, one has to transfer in Washington or Philadelphia even to get to New York City. Direct service is usually in tiny commuter planes.
“Without question, we should have jet service to New York,” said Kenneth R. Scott, current executive director of the airport. “But talk to the airlines, and they all have different reasons for the inability to put jets in.”
And then there are the prices. A trip to Boston without a Saturday stayover, even bought several weeks in advance, recently was costing $700 on USAir.
Ouch.
Of course, all this sets back the economic potential of the area. Having good direct service is simply indispensable for many companies.
We like to talk of how we are the 25th largest metropolitan area, and the only one without a professional sports team. Might it have something to do with us having the 60th largest airport in passenger volume?
Our decision to have two smaller airports — Norfolk International and Patrick Henry in Newport News — mirrors our decision to have lots of other smaller things, say some area observers. Because we can’t cooperate, we end up having four or five convention centers, rather than one or two that would bring in the big guys. The same goes with stadiums and airports.
“We are going to have more mediocre things than anyone else,” said Brad Face of The Face Companies, A MEMBER OF THE AIRPORT EXPANSION ADVISORY COMMITEE, AND PRESIDENT OF THE FUTURE OF HAMPTON ROADS. and a regional business leader. “We are going to have more 10,000 seat arenas than anywhere else in the country. Scope. The Coliseum. ODU. William and Mary. Hampton University. But we don’t have one 25,000 seat stadium. We have two airports. Do we really need them?”
We do have one great big thing. Our port — Virginia International Terminals. What would have been our economic development potential if we had a great airport to go with it?
So what can we learn from all this? The point is to look ahead and see what other major decisions or projects lie ahead that might improve the region’s future.
It is a paradox that as we opt to let the free market rip, as private capital swarms across the globe looking for a home, it is increasingly the public, tax-payer financed decisions of metropolitan regions and their states that determine their competitiveness for that capital. Do we invest in that university or not? Do we build that airport? This even includes decisions like, Do we make the area more liveable by controlling sprawl, or by cooperating on controlling crime and social problems.
A region’s economy depends on its ability to move goods and people quickly and easily to other parts of the country and world. In our modern era, this usually means planes, interstates, ship and rail. Of those, only shipping is really top-notch in Hampton Roads, although freight links for rail are excellent. What if companies in and around Norfolk could easily transfer goods between interstate, air, ship and rail?
But the age of building big airports may be over, even though there has been loose talk of a Superport between here and Richmond. The same goes with interstates. Those transportational networks are largely in place.
The next major transportation revolution may be high-speed rail. As the possibilities and benefits of up to 300 mph travel becomes increasingly real, there is more and more talk of a high-speed network stretching along the East Coast.
Can Hampton Roads get in line for it? Or will we be bypassed? To be a part of it might require money, commitment and cooperation. Already, Charlotte is talking about a link between it and Washington D.C. by high-speed rail.
We’ll see what happens. Will we learn from our past?
Or repeat it?