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MacArthur Center's grand opening was just what the doctor ordered for Norfolk resident Kathy Jublou.

photo by Mark Rhodes

In the afternoon Jublou headed home to recuperate with a new robe and a few other purchases in hand and promptly sent her two sons and husband shopping. By the end of the day, the Jublou family and about 72,000 other first-time MacArthur Center visitors had shopped to live piano music in Nordstrom, peeked into more than 100 stores, and voted their approval with their wallets. The momentum continued throughout the three-day opening weekend as 216,000 shoppers checked out the mall. Over the next few weeks, the shoppers and mall gawkers continued to parade through the center as more stores opened.

While the beeping of electronic cash registers is making Norfolk officials smile, the sound is also reverberating throughout Hampton Roads. MacArthur Center is more than just another Norfolk shopping center. It's an economic powerhouse that is spurring retail and hotel development throughout the region. It ultimately is charged with enticing new companies and creating thousands of spinoff jobs as well as being a magnet that makes tourists linger longer in the region.

"MacArthur Center is an endorsement of the region and not just Norfolk," says Mike McCabe, president of Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate in Norfolk. "This takes us up a notch. In the past, Hampton Roads may have been considered just a discount market -- a place for Super Kmart and Wal-Mart." But with Nordstrom moving into MacArthur Center and Lord & Taylor building a store at Virginia Beach's Lynnhaven Mall, Hampton Roads residents are taking a new look at themselves and the power of their combined $32.7 billion in annual personal income.

Hampton Roads is the country's 27th largest metropolitan statistical area, and it's starting to look the part. Golf is exploding in popularity with the addition of five new courses this year. Upscale hotels are entering the market, and the region's museums are expanding as Hampton Roads polishes its image as a tourist destination that also happens to be a good place to live.

Driving all these quality-of-life improvements are diversification efforts that have expanded the region's economy beyond its traditional strengths of shipping, shipbuilding and military work. "The area is maturing," says John Whaley, deputy executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. "When we attempt to sell ourselves to the outside world, we now have much more to sell. There has been a concerted effort to also upgrade the kinds of companies we're going after."

You could call Dave Rice a one-project kind of guy. In 1963, he landed in Norfolk with a newly minted master's degree in planning from the University of North Carolina. One of his first projects in the city planning department was a proposed downtown shopping center. The late Jim Rouse, a Maryland developer whose wife was from Norfolk, wanted to build on land where vendors once peddled produce and meat at Norfolk's City Market. The city tore down the old market in the 1950s to make way for massive redevelopment plans.

"In the 1950s, some people thought downtown redevelopment was simple -- just assemble the property and turn it over to private developers. But then along came the freeway, and people left the city," says Rice, who is now executive director of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. He finds it ironic that the site Rouse coveted is where MacArthur Center now stands. In the 1960s, however, the Rouse project was a star-crossed one. "We tried to sign up Thalhimer's and Miller & Rhoads, but Military Circle mall was on the drawing boards, and the department stores went there," Rice recalls. Military Circle, on the outskirts of Norfolk, was the region's first big regional mall. It was also the first blow to downtown Norfolk's traditional retail district.

Other suburban malls sprung up in Virginia Beach, Hampton, Newport News and Chesapeake. With each one, Granby Street -- Norfolk's main shopping hub -- lost more retailers and developed a shabby, down-trodden look. Pigeons found plenty of room to roost in dilapidated, empty buildings. Despite having about 35,000 downtown office workers, there was nowhere downtown for women to buy shoes or hosiery.

In 1975, a different developer proposed another use for the old City Market site, 17 acres owned by the redevelopment and housing authority. This time it was Tivoli Gardens, a glass dome encasing a shopping and entertainment complex that included an ice skating rink. A national recession killed that plan. Through the years, ideas came and went for the prime land, including high-rise office buildings and plans that called for divvying up the property among various developers. Through seven mayors and nearly 40 years, Rice and the city hung tough and held out for a mega-project using all the land.

The trail that led to MacArthur Center was first blazed in 1983, when Rouse developed Waterside Festival Marketplace on the Elizabeth River in downtown Norfolk. From there a string of public-private projects, such as the Harbor Park baseball stadium, the Nauticus science center and the Waterside Conference Center and the adjoining Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel, brought downtown back to life. Through all the improvements, however, Norfolk was missing the crown jewel it dreamed of -- an upscale urban shopping center.

The MacArthur Center deal moved along in 1988 when Robert Smithwick, then the city's director of economic development, wrote the Nordstrom family suggesting Norfolk as a potential site for one of their department stores. Their answer was no. Smithwick, a long-time Nordstrom shopper, ignored the reply and kept writing, calling and ultimately meeting with officials of the Seattle-based department store renowned for its customer service. After several studies showed that the Hampton Roads market could support an upscale mall, Nordstrom changed its mind.

In 1994, the city of Norfolk and the housing authority sealed a deal with Nordstrom and Michigan-based mall developer Taubman Co. to build MacArthur Center, with a huge Dillard's as the second anchor. To woo Nordstrom, the city borrowed $32.8 million to build the Nordstrom store and also anted up nearly $70 million to build two parking garages and improve nearby roads. In return, Nordstrom agreed to pay the housing authority $200,000 a year in rent plus a percentage of gross sales exceeding $40 million. Having Nordstrom on board helped lure Taubman, which owns 17 malls and manages 10 others. Taubman and its partner, developer Alexius P. Conroy, put $200 million into MacArthur Center. Taubman, in turn, was able to attract companies such as The Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and Rainforest Cafe, the kinds of places that Hampton Roads shoppers previously drove to Northern Virginia to experience.

The total investment in MacArthur Center is difficult to measure. "The usual figure you hear is $300 million," says mall manager Ed Ladd. "But what's not in that figure are the dollars spent by the tenants on their build-outs." The least expensive shop fit-out in the mall, Ladd says, is $250,000. The mall has room for one more major anchor, and Ladd predicts it will be a store that is "totally new to the market."

For Smithwick, who grew up in Norfolk and is now an economic development consultant across the Elizabeth River in Portsmouth, the opening of MacArthur Center was a proud moment. Each time he sees the mall, he first thinks of his late father, a justice of the peace, whose office and parking spot were once on the mall's acreage. "I wonder how he'd feel," Smithwick muses. "Then I think what a significant contribution MacArthur Center makes to this community," he says. As an economic developer "I look at this region as though it is preparing to have company. It has to get its house in order and be sure the hosts are prepared. They have to make business want to come back. Business will go where it is invited and stay where it is welcome."

For Dave Rice, sitting on the podium at the dedication of MacArthur Center in March also was a career high. "I think I'm the only planner who spent his whole working life on the same project. This is exciting." Rice is particularly happy with the mall's spin-off effect -- renovations at other Hampton Roads malls, revived retail on Granby Street, new and improved hotels and expensive apartments going up a few blocks away.

When it comes to raw land in the 2,499-square-mile Hampton Roads region, there are the haves and the have-nots.

The Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel is scheduled to open next year.

The region's five counties, including James City and Isle of Wight, are blessed with many miles of undeveloped farmland that could have commercial and residential uses. Sprawling cities such as Suffolk, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach are continually wrestling with the issue of turning farmland over to eager developers while still preserving open spaces. But for older urban centers -- such as Portsmouth, Hampton and Norfolk -- land is a precious commodity that mostly comes from redevelopment.

In Portsmouth, for example, a dilapidated neighborhood has been whisked away in favor of a proposed $8 million commerce park. And in March the city was a player in a public-private partnership that acquired Tower Mall, an old shopping center that had lost most of its tenants.

While Portsmouth officials mull over the best use for that property, the city is already immersed in a project it has spent years chasing. On March 11 -- a day before MacArthur Center's opening -- Portsmouth officials broke ground on a 15-story hotel and conference center on the Elizabeth River. Most recently the site had a restaurant and parking lots on it. When it opens next year, the Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel will offer 250 waterfront rooms on the edge of the Olde Towne Historic District and just a five-minute ferry ride from downtown Norfolk. The adjoining Waterfront Conference Center will have 24,000 square feet of meeting space.

Like Norfolk's MacArthur Center, Portsmouth looks to the hotel and conference center as a critical component in downtown revitalization. The city has spent more than a decade reviving a dying downtown that had lost most of its retailers to the suburbs. One key was putting the Virginia Children's Museum into an abandoned department store building five years ago. Last summer the museum unveiled a $3.4 million expansion that has attracted tourists from all corners of the commonwealth and much of North Carolina. Along with the museum, retail has returned to downtown Portsmouth as antique and art dealers set up shop next to cafes.

In Hampton, city planners are working to create a similar atmosphere in a downtown that already boasts the Virginia Air & Space Center and a Radisson Hotel overlooking the city's scenic harbor. In Portsmouth the hotel and convention center remains "an ambitious project for the community. There are bonds to be sold," says Smithwick of the $52 million project. While the city will own the hotel and conference center, they will be developed and managed by Stormont Trice Corp. No stranger to the region, the Atlanta company developed the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel and Waterside Conference Center across the river in downtown Norfolk several years ago. The company continues to operate the Norfolk Marriott.

The Portsmouth project is among several new hotels in the region. In downtown Norfolk, hotel improvements are coming fast and furious thanks to the influx of visitors spurred by MacArthur Center. This spring, the downtrodden Hotel Norfolk, once one of the city's finest accommodations, is sparkling again thanks to a $7 million facelift that transformed it into the Clarion Hotel (see "Minding Your Business" blurb). The Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, which was an Omni until last year, is in the midst of an $8 million renovation. And in April the Ramada Madison became the James Madison amid a $1 million update from Sterling Hotel and Resorts. Nearby, another developer is transforming a once-seedy hotel into the opulent MacArthur Suites, and the buzz on the street is that a new all-suite hotel is destined for a downtown parking lot.

The attraction for all the Norfolk hotels is being within bag-toting distance of MacArthur Center, whose 150 stores are expected to draw shoppers from North Carolina as well as most of Virginia. Busloads of shoppers from Richmond and Wilson, N.C., joined excited locals for the debut of the mall. By opening day, the mall's tourism director had booked 90 motor coach tours, and area hotels are weighing in with packages geared toward serious shoppers.

In Virginia Beach, which already has more than 11,000 hotel rooms, the push is on for ritzier accommodations. In March the city agreed to pay $2 million for less than half an acre of oceanfront property along the boardwalk that was home to an arcade and a parking lot. The land adjoins 1.2 acres the city already owns. The goal is to build a $45 million, four-star hotel and retail center on the combined property, although disputes with developers have put the project on temporary hold.

Meanwhile, the city is considering another project that would put a hotel at Rudee Inlet at one end of the Atlantic Ocean boardwalk. And a few miles away, just past the beachfront community of Sandbridge, the city is trying to buy land for a $30 million eco-tourism lodge. The city already has a mile of oceanfront there with a park on it that adjoins the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, five miles of marshes and land along the Atlantic Ocean. The remote False Cape State Park is beyond Back Bay, further along the coastline.

After years of prodding the project along, architect Roger Newill, a former chairman of Virginia Beach's Resort Area Advisory Commission, is optimistic that the 200-room False Cape Lodge project is finally on track.

"For five months we were at a standstill over negotiations, but now there seems to be a deal," Newill says. Requests for proposals have led to "three of the finest hotel companies in the world competing to build the lodge, whose average room rate would be $232."

Newill, a partner with Hanbury Evans Newill Vlatts & Co., says: "A hotel consultant did a feasibility study and found there is no four-star hotel on the ocean between Martha's Vineyard and Kiawah Island, S.C. We definitely don't want to build just another Holiday Inn."

The clubhouse at the Tournament Players Club in Virginia Beach has the genteel old-money look of a prestigious country club founded generations ago. It has 152 cherry lockers in the men's dressing area and leather chairs in the lobby.

But the vintage look is an illusion: Construction crews completed the clubhouse only a few weeks ago, and the city-owned course is open to the public. The TPC course is designed to "capture existing tourists and some who would have gone to Williamsburg or North Carolina," says Chris Coleman, who manages the course for the PGA Tour. The course, designed by Pete Dye and Curtis Strange, cost $15 million, with one-third of the money coming from the city of Virginia Beach.

Even before its opening this month, the course was in the running for Golf Digest's best new upscale course of 1999 award, and it had lined up a Nike Tour event for 2001. With individual greens fees averaging $70 to $90, TPC is a special-occasion course that provides a new level of challenge for most local golfers. "TPC is the Mercedes of golf companies," Coleman extols. "If we were a hotel, we would be a Ritz-Carlton."

Surveys rank Hampton Roads 259th out of 306 metropolitan areas when it comes to golf courses. But this year the region is taking a big swing at improving that ranking. By summer, golfers will be checking out Heron Ridge, a semi-private Virginia Beach course, and one of only three in the country designed by Fred Couples. Another new option is Cahoon Plantation, an Ault, Clark & Associates creation in Chesapeake that also has semi-private status.

Both Cahoon Plantation and Harbor View, a semi-private course opening in Suffolk this summer, are designed to be centerpieces of golf course communities. They are following the lead of Cypress Creek, a course that opened last summer in an upscale housing community in Smithfield.

When it comes to high-caliber golf, southside Hampton Roads is still playing catch-up with the Virginia Peninsula, its neighbor to the north. The peninsula teed off years ago with Colonial Williamsburg's renowned courses. And in adjacent James City County, Kingsmill Resort's three courses challenge weekend golfers as well as PGA Tour professionals. And a few miles away, Ford's Colony offers two top-flight courses. This summer a third Ford's Colony course will open its first nine holes with the rest scheduled to come on line by next year.

Since 1995, at least five championship courses have opened in the Williamsburg area, some of them winning accolades from national golfing publications. In 1996 and 1997, courses built in the area by the Legends Group of Myrtle Beach, S.C., were named the "best new upscale courses of the year" by Golf Digest.

The Legends course at Stonehouse in James City County won acclaim by blending in with its wooded setting, while The Legends course at Royal New Kent in nearby New Kent County is considered the best interpretation of an Irish course in this country.

Not willing to let newcomers steal their players, several existing courses are sprucing themselves up. Last year Colonial Williamsburg reopened its Golden Horseshoe course after a Rees Jones-designed makeover. And this spring Portsmouth's Bide-a-Wee Golf Course is showing duffers what a $9 million facelift looks like. The Links at City Park, a nine-hole executive course in Portsmouth, recently completed $1 million in improvements, and this year Virginia Beach's city-owned Red Wing Golf Course is getting another 18 holes.

Other courses throughout Hampton Roads are planning improvements, and some cities are gearing up to build new courses as the region tries to attract traveling golfers who might otherwise go to Pinehurst, N.C., or Myrtle Beach. Portsmouth city golf pro Andy Giles, who grew up in Norfolk, has high hopes that improved golf offerings will help draw new corporations to Hampton Roads. When companies look at an area, "quality of life means a lot.

Last year Roy Pearson did most of his Christmas shopping on the Internet. He loved browsing electronically through the wares at Brookstone, Sharper Image and other on-line retailers. Even better was having the robots, space pens and other gadgets delivered right to his home.

But this year, Pearson thinks he may try shopping in person, maybe at MacArthur Center, where some of his favorite stores are located. Even though the center is an hour's drive from his home in Williamsburg, "I'm looking forward to shopping there," says the business professor at the College of William & Mary. "Now I can actually see what's at Brookstone."

With its cushioned lobby couches and cappucino bars, MacArthur Center is a strong magnet for shoppers, so other area malls are working hard to retain their shares of the retail dollars from residents and the estimated 4 million visitors who come to Hampton Roads each year. "The impact of MacArthur Center has been evident for some time," says Ladd, the mall's manager. "There has been a renovation or expansion of just about every shopping venue in Hampton Roads. The customer is the ultimate winner."

With MacArthur Center predicted to hit $400 million in annual sales, area malls are aggressively protecting their turfs with more than $160 million in announced improvements. Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach, already slightly bigger than MacArthur Center in size, is building a $100 million addition that will bring the region its first Lord & Taylor store. And Lynnhaven's 24-screen movie theater with stadium seats will rival MacArthur Center's 18 screens.

In Chesapeake, both of the city's malls are bracing against the stiff new competition. Greenbrier Mall is adding Hecht's as a third anchor this year, and Chesapeake Square plans to open a Hecht's store this fall. Hecht's also became the third anchor for Patrick Henry Mall in Newport News, which recently wrapped up a $27 million expansion. Military Circle, the Norfolk mall that devastated downtown retailers three decades ago, is undergoing a $20 million expansion that will include a 20-screen movie theater and a new Sears store.

Throughout downtown Norfolk, retailers that are within walking distance of MacArthur Center are trying to entice shoppers to venture outside the mall. Granby Street, only a block away, is attracting new restaurants and retailers, and on one side street two area businessmen are putting $1 million into a vacant building to create St. Elmo's Chop House & Oyster Bar. The restaurant's neighbor is the Union Mission men's shelter, which may move to new quarters outside downtown.

Across the street, Heritage at Freemason Harbour, an upscale new apartment community, is having no trouble finding residents willing to pay as much as $1 per square foot per month -- the highest rate in the region for rental housing. By the time 300 apartments and condominiums are completed in downtown Norfolk in a few years, Connecticut-based developer Collins Enterprises will have invested $41 million into downtown housing. Until recently some decrepit downtown commercial buildings leased for only $1 a square foot. But now investors are renovating old buildings and sending property values upward, and downtown property owners have banded together to help maintain the momentum. This spring they began paying a special tax that will cover extra security, street cleaning and landscaping.

Three blocks from the mall, The Waterside Festival Marketplace, the place most likely to take a direct hit from MacArthur Center, is finding new life. Opened in 1983 as a retail, dining and entertainment magnet on the Elizabeth River, Waterside has never been profitable and has had a stream of specialty stores open and close. Last year the city and its redevelopment and housing authority took over ownership of Waterside and began emphasizing entertainment and eating over shopping. This spring, two national chains, Outback Steakhouse and Jillian's arcade, committed to the complex. Together they plan to invest $5 million in improvements.

Williamsburg residents have been in a partying mood since New Year's Eve festivities kicked off a celebration of the city's tricentennial. Exhibits and performances are scheduled throughout the year, but the big event is May Day weekend -- exactly 300 years since the town was chartered.

The National Symphony will be playing in a performance sponsored by the city and the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, and Colonial Williamsburg will showcase a new exhibit on life in Virginia in 1699.

Costumed interpreters at Colonial Williamsburg.

While all this hoopla makes the locals proud, it also helps attract visitors to the Williamsburg area, where at least 80 percent of the economy hinges on tourism. "The activities that surround May 1 have an impact from the standpoint of visitation," says Bob Herschberger, executive vice president of the Williamsburg Area Chamber of Commerce. "The majority of tourists who come have been here before. The 300th anniversary gives them something different," says Pearson, the William & Mary economist. He's predicting a big tourism year for Williamsburg and the rest of Hampton Roads.

While Williamsburg's 300th anniversary is a draw, the big blockbuster is more likely to be Apollo's Chariot, a roller coaster that started drawing crowds to Busch Gardens in March. "The roller coasters have a big impact. They help both sides of the river," Pearson says. It's been two years since Busch Gardens completed Alpengeist, the world's most twisted, inverted roller coaster. That made tourism numbers soar in 1997 when People magazine crowned Alpengeist the best roller coaster in America. With Apollo's Chariot, Busch Gardens is challenging visitors to withstand 825-feet of drops -- more than any other steel roller coaster in the world.

Throughout Hampton Roads, the push is on to give visitors new reasons to return. In Newport News alone there are about $80 million worth of projects in the works. The Mariners Museum is in the midst of a $12 million capital campaign that will help underwrite improvements to its galleries. The museum's neighbor, the Peninsula Fine Arts Museum, is planning a move to a new fine arts center under construction at Christopher Newport University. And down the road, the Virginia Living Museum is nearing the end of a $21 million capital campaign that will pay for quadrupling its interior space and expanding its outside exhibit areas.

In Norfolk the Virginia Zoo and the Norfolk Botanical Garden are revamping themselves. In June the zoo will unveil the first phase of a 10-year plan that will group animals in natural habitats where they have room to roam. This summer the African animals will move into a new, $5 million habitat. Meanwhile, the botanical garden is building an education center and improving its outdoor look.

In downtown Norfolk the city is working on a new attraction, the retired battleship Wisconsin. The most likely location is next to Nauticus, a downtown science center that should benefit from an influx of visitors to the ship. This spring the city entertained proposals from contractors who would prepare a permanent berth for the Wisconsin. One of the most ambitious projects in Hampton Roads is a proposal to add a $45 million third building to the Virginia Marine Science Museum, which doubled in size in 1996.

On the festival front, Hampton Roads has some new crowd-pleasing special events in the works. Next summer tall sailing ships from 50 countries will spend four days in the region as part of OpSail 2000, the largest maritime fleet in history. A whole series of festivals and events are planned around the 150 ships scheduled to visit the region. That event will be a warm-up for the pageantry expected in 2007, when Jamestown celebrates its 400th anniversary. A committee has worked for years to plan a celebration to rival the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, which hosted President Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet.

As one Norfolk shopper contemplates the hefty price tag on a purse during her visit to the Nordstrom store, her spouse gives her some unhusbandly encouragement: "Go ahead and buy it. It's your civic duty."

She heads toward the cash register as he strolls over to the shoe department to do his part to support MacArthur Center, the largest economic development project in Norfolk's 317 years of existence.

MacArthur Center has received a big thumbs-up from numerous area residents -- at least during its honeymoon phase. "I've been through a lot of openings and worked in retail in a lot of communities, but I've never had a situation like this one," Ladd told a group of community leaders five days after the mall's opening weekend. "When people thank you for giving them the opportunity to spend money, it is a special situation."

Only a few vocal naysayers are weighing in with complaints about MacArthur Center's parking fees and the use of public money to subsidize a shopping center.

But no matter how enthusiastic area shoppers are about MacArthur Center, it will take more than their cash and credit cards to make the center a success. Although about 1.6 million people live in Hampton Roads, they have plenty of shopping options and only so much money to spend. To help attract well-heeled shoppers from other areas, MacArthur Center has a well-staffed visitor's desk inside and a visitor center under construction next door that will welcome shoppers and also direct them to area attractions. The mall also has tourism and marketing professionals on staff, targeting potential shoppers from a 45-mile radius that includes Virginia and North Carolina. They also hope to encourage the region's vacationers to stay an extra day and put the mall on their itineraries.

Creating jobs that pay wages high enough to boost disposable income is critical for the success of area retailers and the new golf courses. Although the region has attracted numerous new companies in the past decade, many of them came because of the region's traditionally low wages. Changes in the defense industry have eliminated 25,000 high-paying jobs at area shipyards in the past decade, and more jobs may be in jeopardy if General Dynamics Corp. is successful in its bid to buy Newport News Shipbuilding, which has nearly 18,000 employees.

Many blue-collar workers at the shipyard earn up to $15 an hour plus overtime. But although the actual number of jobs in the region has grown in recent years, many new employers are in the retail, tourism or service industries that pay less than $7 an hour. With unemployment at a 40-year low of about 3 percent, area residents have no trouble finding jobs, but many of them don't pay enough to support a family.

The tight labor market is beginning to boost wages as employers compete for the best workers. "It appears that per capita income grew more than we've seen in years in 1997 and 1998," says John Whaley of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. "For the first time in a number of years, the region should outperform the United States economy in job growth in 1999."

While analyzing the potential of MacArthur Center, Taubman did demographic studies that showed the 45-mile radius around Hampton Roads has an average household income of $50,000, but most studies that focus solely on the region put household income below $40,000.

To reverse the region's cheap-labor legacy, economic developers are targeting industries that pay better salaries. The Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance, which focuses on the south side of the region, is courting engineering services, port-related business and other industries "where the average wage may be $30,000 or more," says John Lombard, interim president. "If somebody comes along and is below the average, we won't turn them down, but we won't seek them out.

The alliance hit its target in December when the New York consulting firm of Towers Perrin announced plans to build a $33 million regional office in Chesapeake. The 1,000 people expected to work there will earn an average of $30,000 annually plus benefits. Even at MacArthur Center, which has about 2,200 workers, some managers are earning $45,000 or more, while hourly workers are making more than their counterparts at other retail centers. The same hunt for better wages holds true on the peninsula, where the Peninsula Economic Development Alliance is "not looking for the typical company that wants cheap buildings, cheap land and cheap wages," says President Rick Weigel. "We are focusing on technology-oriented industries such as automotive, computers and office equipment, communications equipment, medical instruments and electrical components. These companies pay the wages that allow someone to support a family, buy a decent house and have disposable income."

To prepare the work force for those types of industries, the region's colleges and universities are going beyond their traditional missions to provide custom training. They also are leading efforts to boost the area's quality of life.

Tidewater Community College built a campus on Granby Street in downtown Norfolk two years ago to help bring new businesses downtown in addition to serving its students. On the peninsula, Christopher Newport University is changing the look of Warwick Boulevard, one of Newport News' major roads, with plans for a $30 million performing arts center. University officials say the facility's acoustics will rival Carnegie Hall's. Plans also call for adding a $25 million sports and wellness center to the Christopher Newport campus. In Norfolk, Old Dominion University is ready to replace one of the city's marginal neighborhoods with a 75-acre expansion that will bring the region its first university research park, retail stores, a $40 million convocation center and new housing.

Overall, the pace of revitalization is unprecedented throughout the metropolitan area. "This is a marvelous region," says Robert Taubman, CEO of the Michigan-based company that bears his name. "People don't appreciate how much it has grown and the quality of life here."

One area commercial real estate company felt so strongly about the impact of MacArthur Center that it paid for a full-page newspaper ad saluting the project, even though it had no direct involvement in it.

"The opening of MacArthur Center elevates Hampton Roads as a place to live and as a destination to visit," began the Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate ad in The Virginian-Pilot three days before the mall's opening. "World class shopping will help every city and county in the region recruit world class companies."

That view is echoed by James Eason, president of the Hampton Roads Partnership and a former mayor of Hampton. "MacArthur Center is symbolism. We used to hear that the best clothing and things weren't in Hampton Roads. But Nordstrom and the other retailers will begin to turn that idea around."

Symbolism is nice, but does it boost the region's bottom line?

The area's economic developers say it sure can.

At the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance, Lombard believes the mall is making his job a little bit easier this year. "Having MacArthur Center and new golf courses all contribute to an environment that shows a population that is thriving," he says. "This creates a favorable impression on business."

© May 1999, Media General Business Communications, Inc.
publisher of Virginia Business Magazine