Life in the APZ

     In the Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne must wear the letter “A” stitched to her chest as a constant reminder of the failing of her virtue.  In A Christmas Carol, the ghost of Jacob Marely is forced to endure an eternity bound by chains and “purses wrought of steel.”  It seems there is no punishment more judicious than forcing the culprit not only to suffer the consequences of their actions, but to have to live with those consequences on full and constant display.  There is no irony spared in twisting the knife- making misdeeds become the preeminent symbol for the perpetrator and act as a rock weighting them down in a river with a swift current.
     This week, the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) commission recommended far reaching cuts in the nation’s military apparatus.  Officially on the chopping block are Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and Fort Monroe in Virginia.  There is one base name not on the list- NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach, the largest Naval master jet base on the East Coast.  For months the fate of Oceana has been the subject of hushed, anxious, and at time accusatory whispers.  Due to great discontent in Virginia Beach and open bids by Florida and Texas to serve as a new home for Oceana’s squadrons of F/A-18 superhornets, it has been believed that Oceana would be the one given for BRAC to hang up the “Closed” sign.  This didn’t happen- in spite of, rather than because of, city leadership, BRAC decided to allow Oceana to keep operating.  That is, if the city of Virginia Beach can abide by some strict guidelines set down by the Commission and by the Navy.  Guidelines that the city has no viable way of meeting.
     Virginia Beach has just been given its chains.  It’s been given its scarlet letter.
     While there is no shortage of voices placing blame for this mess on “unpatriotic” citizen groups who have been vocal in their complaints about incessant jet noise at all hours of the day, it’s doubtful that BRAC based its decision on the itch of a few malcontents.  Instead, the doom of Oceana has been a recipe the city of Virginia Beach has been working on for decades now.  Let’s provide a little background.  When Oceana was established in the 1950s, Virginia Beach was a developing region- still more of a weekend getaway for the upper echelons up north than a city.  The presence of the Navy may have done more than anything to consolidate the area into a single identity, however the city quickly forgot its birth rite.  When it was built, Oceana enjoyed a spot just miles from open water, almost completely uninhabited for miles around.  With some installations such isolation isn’t necessarily called for, however this is not the case for one that services aircraft which, on rare occasion, have the tendency to stop flying and fall out of the sky.  This couldn’t have been made any more clear than in the 1980s when an aircraft from Oceana crashed on a nearby road, killing one woman.
     Virginia Beach and its neighbor, Chesapeake, have, at times, indulged in kind of a Napoleon complex.  Located on a coast that features some of the largest metropolises in the nation, Washington D.C., Boston, New York, Virginia Beach has strived for its place in the book of relevance.  It wants to be all things to all people.  A popular tourist resort.  A thriving economic center.  An anchor for the U.S. Navy.
     But as one local paper pointed out, it has wanted all of this on its own terms.  The prevailing mentality at the city government level has been to turn Virginia Beach into something that it is not- and damn the consequences.  As the population grew, the keys to the city were thrown to developers who have sought to crowd every conceivable square of land with housing tracts, mini-malls, and so on.  A result of this is that development has encroached on the buffer Oceana used to enjoy, sometimes to the point of neighborhoods being built literally along the fence line.
      The Navy has screamed about this for years, but city officials have grown very good at turning a deaf ear, all the while proclaiming that they are turning Virginia Beach and the entire Tidewater region into a major metropolitan.  Their actions have bordered on arrogance of the most heinous degree.  The city ignored the protests of the majority of its citizens when it took a piece of beach-side park and turned it into a hotel and shopping complex that most residents couldn’t afford to patronize to begin with.  They’ve begun a piecemeal effort to supplant low income housing near the beach and put up high-end condos (the message is becoming clear- the wealthy get first dibs on the surf and sand).  Currently, there is an embarrassing effort underway to create a “downtown” in a city that sprouted out of nothing but farm pastures.  
     Recent item: a developer purchased real estate inside the Oceana flight path from the city in order to build a condominium project (natch) for six million dollars.  When BRAC began sharpening its knives and casting its eye on Oceana, the city got nervous about how such a blatant give-away would look and asked to buy the land back.  The developer agreed- for the price of fifteen million.  The city quickly settled.
     Overall, there is a feeling that Virginia Beach is not working for the people who live there, the people who helped build the city and the later generations who keep it running.  Any chance to be “bigger” or ‘better” is leapt on, reminding me of one of my favorite Simpsons quotes, “It is a testament to the never-give-up and never-think-things-through spirit of the city.”
     BRAC played a cruel joke on the city, but it was one that was richly deserved.  The Commission lambasted the behavior of the city and scolded it in a tone that you would have to travel back to grade school to experience again.  BRAC allowed Virginia Beach to have “one more chance” at Oceana, but no one is fooled.  It may have gone easier on those who had a hand in this if the base was just cut- things would be over and done with relatively quickly.  No, the city leaders of Virginia Beach are going to get to keep their jet base.
     They’re going to get to hold on to it and slowly watch it die.
     And everyone will watch them carry their burden.
     Their chains.
     Their scarlet letter.
     BRAC established two APZs, Accident Potential Zones.  These are areas around the base where a malfunctioning aircraft is most likely to crash.  The ultimatum has been this: evacuate and condemn every business and home in the APZ.  No negotiation, no leeway.
     Once you look at what a task this would be, you get an idea of the grave the city has dug for itself.  Already in the APZs are a dozen neighborhoods with close to two-thousand homes.  At least four public schools.  A major industrial park that houses such companies as Lillian Vernon and Stihl chainsaws.
     And the largest mall and shopping complex in the city.  In effect, if a plane falls out of the sky, this is what it has to fall on.
     Virginia Beach leaders tout that they are “debating” what to do in the wake of BRAC’s announcement, however it isn’t that hard to see the balance.  Fulfilling BRAC’s demands would cost the city upwards of $270 million.  And this does not count the PR nightmare likely to ensue when the city would have to resort to strong arm tactics against businesses and residents who would simply refuse to relocate.  Virginia Beach has been given the guise of being able to save Oceana, however its hubris has been so extreme that there is no conceivable way of meeting the BRAC guidelines.  The base will continue to operate for a few years- the mayor may even get through another election cycle by spinning that she “saved” the base, but I think most people are smart enough to know the truth.  It’s demise, before and after, will stand as a sad symbol of the wasted efforts to give Virginia Beach a glitzy make-over, gambling the solid grass roots that built the city in the first place.  Hester Prynne and Jacob Marley were forced to wear their sins for all to see- and so will the “leaders” of Virginia Beach.  The long, painful road to the day when the jet noise ceases will be their constant reminder of their overindulgent gluttony- and their eventual ouster from office will be the moral to a story of an electorate scorned.