Pamela Hasterok - Daytona Beach News-Journal
July 20, 2000
We-e're still wa-a-iting.
A year ago the people at Ocean Walk told us to be patient, to hang in there and hold out hope for the shiny new
condo tower, the hotel and time share, the shops and restaurants that were all on their way.
So how's it coming? How soon will the long-anticipated linchpin of the beachside's redevelopment be up and running?
How soon can folks buy one of the condos, stay in one of the two new hotels or enjoy spa treatments and snooty
coffee?
Put it this way. Don't stop the mail-order for your favorite Colombian roast.
The condos, originally expected to be done in 1999, are slated for 2001. The hotel, on a fast-track schedule, won't
break ground until next summer. (The other hotel, the 300-room expansion of the Adam's Mark, is just now going
up.) And the shops the ones they told us would be under contract by last fall are nowhere on the horizon.
The happy news is beachside residents can look forward to a 10-plex, stadium-seated cinema, the first on the Peninsula.
They could go to dinner, too, at the themed restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. They just can't do it for another
couple years. Projections have the Beach Shoppes Plaza finished by 2002, but considering the first tenants just
signed on, that seems overly rosy.
For locals like me, eager to whip out our credit cards in pursuit of the latest fashion or artistic gift, we might
as well put our plastic back.
The shopping center lost a third of its space when it couldn't find another spot for the theater, leaving just
39,000 square feet. While the theaters are a great boon for the merchandising mantra of "foot traffic,"
having such limited space makes it dicey whether Ocean Walk can attract the midscale stores it was shooting for.
Shops like The Gap and Banana Republic and Brookstone want neighbors like themselves, and 39,000 square feet isn't
likely to draw many.
But city officials offer hope for us seaside shoppers. As unlikely as it may seem today, they envision a swanky
stretch of stores, restaurants, galleries and the like along the Boardwalk. What's more, they have someone who
wants to do it. Bill Geary, one of the trio of Ocean Walk developers, has proposed an ambitious redo of the aging
Boardwalk, that 1930s era funland turned seedy, sandy promenade.
At Geary's urging, officials are on the verge of asking for proposals for the mammoth undertaking. That activates
the same government grants, special taxes and condemnation power the city used to lure Ocean Walk to develop the
beachside's blighted core. And Geary's $100 million proposal would make a shopper's heart race, offering between
200,000-250,000 square feet for stores and restaurants. Surely there's room in there for a chi-chi shop, a tony
restaurant or two.
Ocean Walk represents progress, a long overdue facelift for Daytona's tourist center. But from a purely selfish
point of view, another condo-hotel-theater does not a destination make. Once you've admired the lobby, checked
out the marble foyer and evaluated the comfort of the chairs, then what?
Ocean Walk has a chance to be one of the first new businesses to contribute to changing the city's image from lowdown
to upscale. So far they're offering us Bubba Gump for lunch and "Gladiator" in surround sound.
How about something for the rest of us, the locals who will be here when the bikers, race fans and revelers have
gone home? What about a wine bar or continental restaurant? Would a Williams-Sonoma be too much to ask for? Would
the occasional gasp foreign film be out of the question?
OK, laugh, say it will never happen. Say Daytona Beach isn't that kind of place. Say me and my friends would be
the only people in town who would want to sip a pinot noir, dine on endive, shop for a garlic press and watch "Life
is Beautiful."
I say look around. See all those folks saving their pennies for afternoons in Winter Park and weekends in St. Augustine,
trekking to I-Drive's designer shops and I-4's four-star restaurants?
I say, they'd like to join us.
Hasterok is the News-Journal's political columnist. She can be reached at pamela.hasterok@news- jrnl.com
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