Long-awaited Virginia Beach Trail moving forward, $14.9M federal grant approved by council

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — A major project decades in the making, and thought by some to be out of reach, took a major step forward on Tuesday night in Virginia Beach.

Virginia Beach City Council voted 10-0 to accept $14.9 million in federal funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and to provide a $3.9 million local match to complete phase 1 of the Virginia Beach Trail.

The proposed 12-mile, 10-foot wide pedestrian and biking trail, which will span the full width of the city from the Newtown area to the Oceanfront, has been listed as the number 1 priority for the city’s active transportation plan — with safety, wellness, economic activity and more as key selling points.

“It will be the central spine that connects all the other facilities across the city, it provides the greatest safety impact for our residents and visitors, allowing them to move on a path separate from vehicular traffic,” said Walter Camp of the Virginia Beach Bikeways and Trails Advisory Committee, who’s been a key figure for years in the planning of the project. “This project is so important it’s featured as a central element of the comprehensive plan of the city that’s being updated.”

“People of all different ages, abilities and incomes can utilize and be positively impacted by the trail in many ways,” added Yeardley Pearson, a cross country runner at First Colonial High who says she’s been following the trail’s progress for years.

Senators Mark Warner (D) and Tim Kaine (D) announced last month they helped procure the federal funding for the project, which comes through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant Program to help improve pedestrian safety nationwide.

Previous coverage: Virginia Beach Trail could be ‘life-changing’ when complete

Phase 1 is expected to cost $19.5 million, and run east from the Newtown Road light rail station at the Norfolk line to Virginia Beach Town Center, where a pedestrian bridge will be built over Independence Blvd. $14.9 million of that will come from the federal infrastructure grant, and another $750,000 is coming from an earmark in the 2023 federal omnibus appropriations bill.

Virginia Beach is required to put $3.9 million local match toward the project. They’ll use $902,000 from the sale of easements to Dominion Energy (for its offshore wind project) toward that match. The rest of the $2,998,000, slated to come from the city’s general fund, was approved as part of Tuesday night’s vote.

The trail was actually supposed to run right next to the city’s proposed light rail extension, but when that referendum failed in 2016, the trail project fell by the wayside due to lack of funding.

“We really thought this was an impossibility because of the meager amounts we were able to get, but it was all we had for doing trails but this one is really one of those things we’d sort of given up on,” said Councilwoman Barbara Henley at council’s informal meeting on Tuesday.

Virginia Beach officials applied multiple times for funding (five at the federal level), and finally got some leverage for big dollars after getting that initial $750,000 Community Project Funding Grant through the Housing and Urban Development, procured in 2022 by former U.S. Representative Elaine Luria (D-2nd District).

“The fact that we got the $700,000 in the previous earmark with the delegation working together that was able to really enable us to have a much more effective argument when we were going through the grant process,” said Alfonso Lopez, a lead federal lobbyist who works on behalf of Virginia Beach.

Camp also credited former Virginia Beach Senior Planner Elaine Linn for getting them to this point. In 2019, he says she told Camp’s team to take a long shot.

“She recognized there’s big federal money out there, and very competitive, but shoot for the moon. And we were just so pleased that city council backed the attempt.”

Getting that initial $14.9 million grant also bodes well on getting funding for future phases of the project, per Anthony Bedell, co-lead lobbyist for Virginia Beach, said on Tuesday.

“It doesn’t guarantee it because it’s still a nationally competitive program, but I think showing and being shovel ready like what we’re going to be doing is important for this administration. They wanna get that money out and get those infrastructure projects started right away,” Bedell said.

Despite the Newtown/Town Center stretch being called phase 1, there is a 1.7-mile stretch that already exists at the Oceanfront at Norfolk Avenue, which was built 15 years ago. Future phases of the project would stretch from Town Center to S. Plaza Trail (2.6 miles), and S. Plaza Trail to Birdneck Road (5.1 miles).

Phase 1 of the project is expected to be completed around summer 2029, a construction timeline on Tuesday’s council document reads.

You can read more about the trail and see more images on the city’s website.

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