VIRGINIA BEACH
Alec Yuzhbabenko had just parked his car at the North End last summer and was about to get his surfboard out when the call came.
With his cellphone pressed to his ear, he could hardly believe what he was hearing from developer Mike Culpepper.
Pharrell Williams, an international music superstar, liked his surf park idea?
Did he really want to be a partner in the project and believe it would reshape the face of Virginia Beach?
“I was in disbelief,” said Yuzhbabenko, 27. “I forgot where I was and what was going on.”
What started out as a college thesis project when Yuzhbabenko was an architecture student at Virginia Tech is gaining momentum.
Now, that concept not only has Pharrell’s name on it, but the development group pitching it is working exclusively with the city to make it a reality. The goal is to build a surf park near the Oceanfront at the former Dome site between 18th and 20th streets.
If the plan gets off the ground, shops, restaurants, apartments, an entertainment center and parking decks would rise from the site of a former music venue. The surf park would be its centerpiece. It would cost $300 million, and the city manager has said tourism tax dollars could be used to support the entertainment center and parking. Venture Realty Group and the city are negotiating the terms.
It’s a dream come true for Yuzhbabenko, who grew up surfing in Virginia Beach.
His family had moved here from Ukraine when he was 8 years old. He took up skateboarding until an injury forced him to find another sport – surfing.
He’d get out of school at Kellam High and haul a surfboard and wetsuit onto an HRT bus that would take him to the Oceanfront.
But unlike skateboarding in the parks, with unchanging ramps and rails, the ocean doesn’t always provide a consistent wave.
“How cool would it be to have on-demand surfing?” he thought.
The idea floated around his head for the next several years.
In 2013, during an internship at Clark Nexsen, a local architectural firm, he designed the “Central Beach Parkway,” a green linear park on 18th Street, alongside a proposed light rail station and part of the then-new ViBe Creative District.
It was then that he became familiar with the Dome site. It always interested him. Big empty parking lots close to the ocean in the resort area.
“The Dome site was a critical piece into the ViBe from the Oceanfront and from the ViBe to the Oceanfront,” Yuzhbabenko said.
In his final year at Tech studying urban architecture in 2014, he chose to do his thesis on the site.
He focused on a design centered around a new movement that favored urban development over suburban sprawl.
It draws from European ideas where people leave their apartment, grab a cup of coffee and walk to work.
“A self-sustaining, live, work, play idea,” he said.
He thought about those high school days when the surf wasn’t up but he wanted to play.
“It’s the simple idea of supply and demand,” he said. The demand was there, but the waves weren’t.
Thus, a surf park at the Dome site was born and, in Yuzhbabenko’s mind, it would be surrounded by apartments, a coffee shop, offices.
He admits there was some selfishness in his plan. His vision was of a Utopian place.
“At least where I would love to reside,” he said. “Where I’d love to be.”
He sketched it out and studied technology developed by a Spanish company called WaveGarden where endless waves roll through a large pool.
Even though at that time he knew WaveGarden’s surf park concept couldn’t fit on the Dome site, he decided to write his thesis about the idea for one surrounded by residences, restaurants and shops.
Again, it seemed like a long shot.
Yuzhbabenko graduated in 2015 and got job offers at elite firms around the country, but he wanted to come back home, he said, “and use what I learned to better the area that I grew up in.”
He went to work full time for Clark Nexsen, where he presented his thesis to co-workers.
“People liked it because it was rooted in the culture of Virginia Beach,” Yuzhbabenko said.
Enter Joe LaMontagne, owner of a title and escrow company.
LaMontagne grew up surfing in Virginia Beach too and worked at 17th Street Surf Shop when he was a teenager. In 1998, he went to a surf expo for the store in Orlando and watched a demonstration in a surf pool at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon.
“It was one of those eye-opening things,” LaMontagne said.
He wanted to bring the concept home. For years, the idea of a surf park stayed in the back of his mind, he said.
In 2014, he met with Councilman John Uhrin, who LaMontagne said was supportive and suggested some options for where it could work in the city.
At the time, the Dome site wasn’t one of them, Uhrin said in a recent interview, because LaMontagne’s idea then was for a stand-alone surf park. Now, Uhrin supports Venture Realty Group’s plan for one with additional attractions to draw locals and tourists.
Last year, LaMontagne knew that Venture Realty Group was submitting qualifications to develop the Dome site into a multifaceted entertainment venue.
He met with Billy Almond, a landscape architect and an avid surfer, and pitched his idea again. Soon after, a mutual friend connected Almond and LaMontagne with Yuzhbabenko.
A surf park at the Dome site?
“Well, it’s done,” said Yuzhbabenko, who had already designed it for his thesis. And his concept included some of those additional attractions – shops, places to live – that the city wanted.
It was just a matter of tweaking it to fit with what Venture Realty Group had in mind.
The clock was ticking. The development group wanted to present a knock-out plan to reinvigorate the long-vacant Dome site.
Yuzhbabenko dove in to the project.
“I took this thing on as my baby,” he said. “I didn’t sleep. I went full throttle.”
He even built a model without anyone asking him to.
LaMontagne’s new company, H2O Investments, will develop the surf park. Almond’s company is also a partner in the project. Yuzhbabenko now works for the Norfolk-based architectural firm Hanbury, also a partner.
As Venture Realty met with a Dome site committee appointed by the city, WaveGarden released a video of the company’s new technology for small spaces. It was called a cove.
Yuzhbabenko, LaMontagne and Culpepper, a Venture Realty partner, flew to Spain in September to test it out. The waves were better than they expected. And another star aligned.
Yuzhbabenko took a break one day to go surfing last summer when Culpepper called. His surf park idea for the Dome site had been passed along to Pharrell, who wanted to make it happen.
“That was really a humbling moment,” Yuzhbabenko said.
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com
