It will happen one reasonable rezoning at a time.

On Tuesday, the Virginia Beach City Council voted 10-1 to approve a mixed-use condominium development at Shore and Marlin Bay drives. The project will replace a fenced gravel storage yard with 52 condominiums, commercial space, landscaping and stormwater improvements.

The approved rezoning covers 2.2 acres directly across Marlin Bay Drive from Pleasure House Point Natural Area. Plans call for a five-story building that steps down to three stories near existing townhomes, with between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet of commercial space. The development will contain two-, three- and four-bedroom condominiums and generate an estimated 460 daily vehicle trips.

On the merits, the proposal is defensible.

The existing property is not a park, wetland or untouched maritime forest. It is primarily a gravel boat-trailer storage lot. The developer reduced an earlier concept, changed the project from apartments to for-sale condominiums and met repeatedly with residents. A previous proposal involving nearly 200 apartments was abandoned several years ago.

Supporters reasonably argued that the project represents an improvement.

“As a resident in the Bayfront Corridor, I’m looking forward to something different on this property than the existing fenced gravel boat trailer parking lot,” resident Brad Martin told the council.

Councilman Joash Schulman, who represents the district, said the final proposal reflected extensive community involvement.

“It has significantly changed because residents spoke up, the civic league got involved, our city staff came and helped to work out issues, and the applicant was flexible, responsive, and they listened,” Schulman said.

Opponents were not arguing that a gravel storage yard should be preserved forever. They questioned whether a five-story, 52-unit building represents the right transition between Shore Drive, established neighborhoods and one of the city’s most important natural areas.

“We want development that strengthens Ocean Park, not one that overwhelms it,” resident Krista Woodlock said. “We want a process that genuinely listens to residents and preserves the safety, stability and character of the neighborhood we love.”

That is the larger issue.

Virginia Beach has spent the past several years pursuing major developments, entertainment districts, resorts, housing projects and commercial investments. Many are worthwhile. The city needs housing, investment and a stronger tax base.

But development is not automatically progress.

A beach city cannot judge every proposal individually while ignoring their cumulative effect. Each project can be attractive, professionally designed and economically rational while the city around it becomes more crowded, more generic and less connected to the natural assets that made people want to live there in the first place.

That is how coastal cities lose their identity.

Myrtle Beach did not set out to become a continuous corridor of hotels, condominiums, attractions and parking lots. Ocean City did not decide in one meeting that nearly every block should be intensely developed. Those places evolved parcel by parcel, approval by approval, until the development became the destination.

Virginia Beach should not aspire to become Ocean City with wider roads and better landscaping.

Even Myrtle Beach’s current comprehensive plan calls for public open spaces near new and existing housing, preservation of natural corridors and minimum usable open-space requirements in residential developments. The plan reflects a lesson many coastal cities learn only after much of the land has already been consumed.

Charleston offers a different model. It continues to grow and faces its own development pressures, but it has treated parks, waterfront access, historic character and civic spaces as essential infrastructure. Charleston maintains approximately 1,700 acres of parkland across more than 140 parks, including neighborhood parks, linear parks and signature public spaces that reinforce the city’s identity.

Charleston understands that its most valuable land is not always the land that produces the greatest immediate real estate return.

Some of it must remain public.

Virginia Beach can point to an outdoor recreation system covering more than 7,000 acres, including major natural areas, beaches and parks. Pleasure House Point itself represents an extraordinary preservation victory. The city and its partners protected the 118-acre property after it had once been targeted for large-scale waterfront development.

But the city’s size can make its open-space numbers appear stronger than the everyday experience of many residents.

The Trust for Public Land reports that only 11% of Virginia Beach land is used for parks and recreation, compared with a national median of 15%. About 69% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park. Residents in lower-income neighborhoods also have significantly less park space per person than those in wealthier parts of the city.

A large natural area miles away does not replace a neighborhood park, shaded public plaza, waterfront overlook or preserved grove within walking distance.

And open space should not mean only recreation complexes, athletic fields or land that cannot be developed because it floods. The city needs civic space that is intentionally protected because it makes neighborhoods more valuable, distinctive and livable.

The Marlin Bay property should not remain a gravel storage lot or overgrown weeds indefinitely. Redevelopment is appropriate, and the approved plan is substantially better than the previous apartment proposal.

But “better than what is there now” cannot be Virginia Beach’s only development standard.

The city should require major rezonings to contribute meaningful public space, pedestrian connections, tree canopy and waterfront access. It should identify the remaining coastal, wooded and neighborhood parcels worth acquiring before they become development applications. It should treat open-space investment with the same seriousness it gives roads, sports facilities and economic development projects.

Virginia Beach’s competitive advantage is not that it can build what every other coastal city has already built.

Its advantage is that it still has something many of those cities lost: room to breathe, natural shorelines, established neighborhoods and stretches of the coast that do not feel manufactured.

The Marlin Bay vote will not transform Virginia Beach into Myrtle Beach or Ocean City.

But it should remind the city that every approval answers a larger question: Is Virginia Beach developing the qualities that make it special, or developing over them?

That decision is being made one parcel at a time whether its Marlin Bay or the ITA area.

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