VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Inside Hanbury's office in Norfolk, Alec Yuzhbabenko uncaps his marker and starts sketching.
Within seconds, a structure appears on the paper.
“I grew up very familiar with this building," said the 31-year-old, recalling memories from his childhood in Ukraine. “Everybody lives around the perimeter. There’s, like, this green space in the center where all the kids play.”
He then moves to the other side of the paper and sketches another structure. The bones are similar to the first...but there's a pool in the middle.
“The playground becomes embedded in the culture of Virginia Beach. The playground is surfing," he continues. "All these city blocks are sort of looking down at this spectacle.”
On one side is an eastern European apartment block. On the other — the largest development in Virginia Beach; the $335 million Atlantic Park and its most famous element, an artificial surf park.
Yuzhbabenko is the design lead for the massive project and says he drew inspiration from his early life in Odesa, just as he did from 20 years living in Virginia Beach.
“[Virginia Beach] raised me, so it’s like, ‘how can I give back?’ and this is my way of giving back," he said.
Atlantic Park is an 11-acre development with homes, shops and a 70,000 square foot music venue all surrounding the surf park. The support of Beach native Pharrell Williams caught much of the attention when the project was announced in 2018.
But it was Yuzhbabenko's design that helped get Williams on board.
“I jumped at it because I recognized the opportunity," Williams told News 3 shortly after the initial announcement.
Five years later, Atlantic Park has finally broken ground. It's also been ten years since Yuzhbabenko built his architecture thesis at Virginia Tech around the earliest version of the design.
“(I) saw these two parking lots between 18th and 20th streets, Pacific and Arctic. I was like, ‘this is prime land in the center of Virginia Beach. Why hasn’t anything been done with this?,'” he recalled.
And so, he came up with something he thought would best fill the space. A mixed-use development with an artificial surf park at the center.
“Surfing was something that I love doing, but Virginia Beach doesn’t sort of…give the supply," said Yuzhbabenko.
...and that's where things get a little weird.
“You’re sitting there thinking ‘can I just push a button and make waves come?,'" said Joe LaMontagne recalling all the times he's sat on a surfboard on a flat Atlantic Ocean.
Joe LaMontagne
The founder of H2O Investments tells News 3 that the idea of "creating waves" first came in Orlando in the late 1990s. LaMontagne says he was watching friends at a surf competition on artificial waves in a wave pool.
“We should have one of these here," he remembers thinking after returning home.
It's a thought that lingered for 20 years until a fateful meeting with Venture Realty Group as the city began requesting proposals for the vacant site of the former Virginia Beach Dome.
It's the same site Yuzhbabenko targeted in his college thesis two years prior. His firm at the time told him to dust it off.
“They were saying, ‘this is incredible. Let’s go with that because we just had somebody asking us about doing a surf park,'" the architect recalls.
That 'somebody' was LaMontagne.
“You had these two people thinking about the same thing and meeting at the same time. It was almost like it was meant to be," said LaMontagne.
Pharrell soon got involved and the Venture-led submission was selected.
As work to secure funding commenced, initial plans to break ground in 2019 were delayed, and LaMontagne says they were delayed further when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
"We just had a lot of things that we needed to make sure were going to work before we put shovels in the ground," he told News 3, adding that Pharrell played a big part in keeping the project alive.
Over time, the renderings have changed, as has the technology of the Wavegarden surf park to create more waves and generate as much revenue as possible. But the moment, LaMontagne insists, is finally here.
“We’re getting started. We’re closed. Financing is done and we’re on our way. This is going to be completed in two years," he said, adding with a laugh. "When I say this is a dream come true..."
He's convinced Atlantic Park will change the so-called Central Beach District, helping to make Virginia Beach into a year-round destination.
The project has countless local hands working on it now, but in true Virginia Beach fashion, the idea began in the ocean. Two surfers just looking to catch a few more waves.
"To bring something that I love to the place that I love? That's huge," said LaMontagne.
And Yuzhbabenko, about to turn 32 at the time of the groundbreaking, couldn't ask for a bigger start to his career as an architect.
“All these stars have aligned in a constellation that, in a way, you can’t make this up again," he said, commenting about how his two young daughters could eventually use the surf park he designed.
Hundreds of millions of dollars that started as simply as possible: A marker and some paper.
Venture Realty Group says Phase 1 of Atlantic Park, including the surf park, should be finished in 2025.
