Virginia Beach defers vote on parking limits near hotel
Council wants to learn construction timeline first
VIRGINIA BEACH — The City Council agreed Tuesday that it needs more information before deciding whether to extend parking limits near the Cavalier hotel campus.
Since 2019, residents of Cavalier Shores, a historic neighborhood adjacent to the Cavalier hotel, have been using a temporary parking permit program that has kept construction workers, hotel workers and beachgoers from parking in front of their homes for long periods.
The public can only park for three hours on 43rd-45th streets, a measure approved by the City Council two years ago as a solution to issues that arose while the Marriott hotel was being built. Now, a third hotel on the Cavalier property is getting off the ground.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, when the topic of parking near the Cavalier came up, Councilman John Moss asked the city manager to provide an update on the construction. A vote was deferred until April 6.
“It goes back to why we created this particular exception to start with, this policy, because of the impact of the construction of the Cavalier on the neighborhood,” Moss said.
Meanwhile, a neighboring civic league voiced its objection to the on-street permit parking in a letter to the City Council this week.
“The program clearly discriminates against all of the citizens of Virginia Beach except for this privileged group,” North Virginia Beach Civic League President John David wrote in the letter.
David wrote that restricting parking in Cavalier Shores only moves the parking problems onto the residential streets farther north.
“Granting this group exclusive access to public property simply pushes parking northward onto other streets,” he wrote. “If this group is to be granted control of public streets, the program should be extended to the entire North End to be fair.”