Virginia Beach anticipates bright tourism summer

Three Dog Night ushered in a new era for The Dome in Virginia Beach in May, belting hits like “Joy to the World” to excited fans and driving the summer entertainment season on the Oceanfront.

Next on tap is the launch of the Wavegarden surf lagoon, which is expected to open this summer, according to city officials. Both The Dome and Wavegarden are major pieces of the $350 million Atlantic Park, the long-awaited entertainment complex led by Virginia Beach-raised music and fashion superstar Pharrell Williams and Virginia Beach’s Venture Realty Group, his frequent development collaborator.

The two new venues are also bright spots for the resort city even as tariffs buffet other key economic engines in Virginia Beach.

“The beach is busy,” says Amanda Jarratt, the deputy city manager who was tapped as interim economic development director after Christian Green resigned in June due to family issues. “We started our busy season much earlier this year than in previous years.”

In February and March, more than 10,000 athletes hit town on back-to-back weekends for three NCAA Division I conferences’ track championships at the Virginia Beach Sports Center. That venue and others are making Virginia Beach more of a year-round destination than before, Jarratt notes.
Also, responding to the cancellation of Something in the Water’s late April music festival, the city quickly staged Vibe Check, a replacement festival that drew a crowd of 1,000 to see rapper Waka Flocka Flame, and the third annual Jackalope Festival followed up with a strong showing in late May.

The extreme sports showcase will return to the beach for the next three years, planners say.

Jarratt says she expects the city to attract about 14 million visitors this summer, the same as last year.

The deep blue sea

The forthcoming Wavegarden lagoon has drawn headlines since it first was mentioned in 2018 as a project spearheaded by Pharrell Williams and using Spanish wave-making technology that then had not been used in the United States, although a California surf park has since opened. As of mid-June, developers said the surf lagoon has been filled with water, and it is expected to open mid-summer, although they would not give a specific opening date.

Plans to open Virginia Beach’s Wavegarden were delayed due to financing obstacles and a delay in construction in 2023 caused by elevated levels of arsenic and iron, an issue that has since been fixed. Known as Atlantic Park, the $350 million project sits on the 10-acre site that formerly housed an earlier version of The Dome, between 18th and 20th streets.

The public-private partnership is supported by $125 million in city funding for two parking decks and infrastructure improvements, and the city owns the venue. Ultimately, Atlantic Park is expected to include 100,000 square feet of restaurants and retail, 10,000 square feet of office space, 20 surf bungalows and 300 apartments on its 11 acres.

Meanwhile, two outdoor cafes — Mi Vida and The Grill — have opened, and Jarratt says there are talks ongoing with an ice cream shop and a men’s retailer to come in.

“The retail and restaurants will come online throughout the summer into the early fall, and then we anticipate the multifamily units being available in the fall of this year,” Jarratt says. “This is Virginia Beach’s largest public-private partnership in history. Because it’s opening in phases, we won’t see the full economic impact until after 2026.”

In 1994, the old Dome was torn down after Three Dog Night performed the final show at the geodesic concert hall in 1993.

The new Dome, which employs 209 people, has a capacity of about 3,500 attendees, similar to Chrysler Hall, and room for another 1,500 people when the doors are open to an outside viewing area. Live Nation is in charge of scheduling events and promised to stage 100 shows this year at The Dome, and Jarratt says the city is anticipating closer to 200 events next year.

Vincent Magnini, a professor of management at Longwood University, is contracted to perform an economic analysis after the 2025 season to ensure The Dome is on track, she says.

“We’re really excited about not only The Dome, but the entire project,” Jarratt adds. “It’s truly going to be transformational for the Oceanfront.”

Beyond the beach

While the city’s biggest attraction is the beach, Jarratt says sports tourism offers a new focus and opportunity. “We’re really working to be a 12-month destination.”

Central to that is the Virginia Beach Sports Center, a $68 million project opened in October 2020 near the Virginia Beach Convention Center. The 285,000-square-foot indoor facility is one of the largest of its type on the East Coast, with 12 basketball courts that can be converted into 24 volleyball courts and a 200-meter hydraulically banked indoor track, all with enough seats for more than 5,000 spectators.

After a 2023 audit revealed the original operator of the venue, Eastern Sports Management, was millions of dollars in debt and had failed to pay promoters, the city purchased ESM’s contract and installed Sports Facilities Cos., a Florida firm that manages similar venues in other tourist destinations.

Volleyball tournaments, softball tournaments, cheerleading competitions, dance competitions and wrestling tournaments have filled the center in recent years.

“Focusing on events like that really does weatherproof our weekends,” Jarratt says, adding that the city was also looking not only at recruiting tournaments, but providing other activities for athletes’ family members with downtime.

Focusing on drawing more domestic visitors is even more important today since Virginia Beach traditionally draws a significant tourism dollar from Canadian visitors. With President Donald Trump’s provocations against the nation’s neighbor to the north, including threatening tariffs and proposing making Canada the “51st state,” some Canadians are declining to visit the U.S. as tourists.

In 2023, Canadians spent $38 million in Virginia Beach, according to a city study. As stated in a May New York Times story, the number of Canadian travelers to the U.S. by plane dropped 19.9% in April, and car travelers declined by 35.2% compared with April 2024.

“We’ve seen a slight decline in our Canadian booking,” says John Zirkle, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association and corporate director of operations for Harmony Hospitality. “We’re a drive-to destination for a lot of the people in Canada, so we’re hoping that they don’t take politics out on us. We’re just here to provide a great experience.”

So far, the city’s labor force has not suffered from federal policy, though, Jarratt and Zirkle say. Most foreign students who work at the Oceanfront in the summer already had obtained their J-1 visas before Trump took office. As of May, there were no major labor shortages in Virginia Beach’s hospitality industry.

As for tourists from Virginia, federal worker layoffs and cutbacks affecting government contractors may put a crimp in visitor numbers, Zirkle says, but upscale, branded properties are performing better than lower-end hotels.

“We’ve got something for everyone,” Zirkle says. “But not everyone can afford to go all the time.”

The city’s leadership troubles have continued, though, with economic development director Christian Green’s resignation after less than four months on the job in June due to “pressing family matters,” according to the city. He joined Virginia Beach in February, succeeding Chuck Rigney, who resigned abruptly last July following scrutiny of his travel expenses. Jarratt, who was interim director after Rigney’s departure, is back in the role a second time.

The energy sector

Tariffs are a challenge for Dominion Energy‘s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, potentially increasing the cost of the $10.7 billion project by $500 million if levies remain in effect through 2026, according to Bob Blue, the Fortune 500 utility’s chair, president and CEO, speaking during a May earnings call. He said that as of early May, Dominion had incurred about $4 million in tariff costs, and that would likely grow to about $120 million if tariffs extend through the end of the second quarter.

Residential customers, however, would see a relatively small increase of about four cents on their monthly bills, Blue anticipates. “It’s difficult to fully assess the impact tariffs may [add to] the project’s final cost. … Let me be clear, CVOW remains one of the most affordable sources of energy for our customers.”

Costs aside, CVOW is moving along on schedule and is set to be complete in late 2026, says Dominion spokesman Jeremy Slayton. As of May, 96 of the 176 monopile foundations had been installed, and construction of the 2.6-gigawatt wind farm was 55% complete.

Wind energy projects, especially offshore, have hit headwinds under Trump, who is opposed to efforts to shift electricity production to renewable methods. But as Dominion said earlier this year, it received all of its federal permits for CVOW before Trump took office.

Closer to shore, Globalinx completed construction this spring on four marine bore pipes that extend into the Atlantic Ocean from a Sandbridge parking lot, part of a project to increase the number of subsea fiber cables entering the state.

With tech experts predicting higher demand for data centers due in part to the AI boom and related internet use, these cables will bring more data flow to Virginia.

Currently, three ultra-high-speed transatlantic cables connect Virginia Beach to Brazil, France and Spain and come to Virginia Beach’s Corporate Landing Business Park. The addition of other subsea cables is expected to increase subsea data flow into the state by more than 400%, says Greg Twitt, founder and president of Globalinx.

“We need to be ahead of the AI race and subsea cables are creating the capacity. We need to put that infrastructure in now,” Twitt says. He notes that 97% of internet traffic moves through oceanic cables, and 70% of the world’s traffic moves through Loudoun County’s data centers.

Meanwhile, other data centers across the state have been approved and are under construction. Proposed data center campuses also face opposition, including in nearby Chesapeake, where hundreds of residents spoke against a planned data center in Great Bridge. Some Sandbridge residents voiced opposition against Globalinx’s project as well, but Twitt says there aren’t many options for alternate subsea landing locations.

“The only place to date that’s been good for subsea cables to come into Virginia is Virginia Beach,” he says. “So, it’s a great Hampton Roads initiative, but it really is a Virginia initiative more than anything, and the need to have that traffic go all the way up to Ashburn is incredibly important.”

Subsea cables also will deliver ultrafast internet access to Hampton Roads, a capacity attractive to businesses, Twitt notes. Two of the incoming conduits already have committed tenants, but Twitt says he is not ready to disclose them. The cables will also attract more terrestrial telecom carriers, increasing competition in the area, a benefit to local consumers, he adds.

But the biggest benefit is building for the future, creating reliability and resilience to attract tech companies that see opportunities where cables land, Twitt notes. “What we’re doing is building infrastructure for the big guys.”

Virginia Beach at a glance

Virginia’s most populous city and the 43rd largest in the United States, Virginia Beach encompasses 310 square miles, with 38 miles of beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay. A major East Coast tourism destination, Virginia Beach features a vibrant resort area on its Oceanfront. Along with tourism, major industries include defense, bio and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, maritime and logistics, IT and offshore wind energy. It’s also home to Naval Air Station Oceana, the East Coast base for the Navy’s strike fighter jet squadrons. Regent University and Virginia Wesleyan University are based in Virginia Beach, along with campuses for Tidewater Community College, Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University.