The Corner That Finally Got Its Statue (and the One Still Waiting for a Tenant)

Sit at the light at Princess Anne and Witchduck long enough and you start to notice things. The apartment building where the old high school used to be. The shopping center across the way. Kempes Landing Park, quiet and green, tucked behind the intersection like it's been there forever. And now, since April, something new on the northeast corner: a glass sculpture shaped like a two-masted schooner, catching the light every time it changes.

Three of those four corners took decades to settle into what they are now. The fourth is still, as of this summer, an open question the city is actively trying to answer. If you've driven through Historic Kempsville recently and wondered what's actually going on at that intersection, here's the short version: you're watching a neighborhood fill in its own crossroads one corner at a time, and the newest piece isn't a business. It's a monument, sitting on the one lot the city still hasn't figured out what to do with.

A Decade of Land Assembly, One Corner at a Time

The reason that northeast corner looks unfinished is that, structurally, it has been. Virginia Beach originally acquired the land there for a road realignment project meant to fix traffic flow through the intersection. Once that road work wrapped, the city kept assembling adjacent parcels for years afterward, eventually controlling more than 10 acres. Two small pieces never came along for the ride: an auto sales lot and a small office, both held by the same trust, whose owner the city hasn't been able to reach.

A local reporter covering the story this July described the result as a hole in a redevelopment donut, an apt way to put it. In 2015, the city floated proposals for the site but didn't yet control enough land to make anything work. This past July, Virginia Beach City Council directed staff to issue a formal request for proposals, essentially asking developers to look at what the city has and pitch what could go there. Bobbie Gribble, who chairs the Historic Kempsville Citizens Advisory Committee, has been present for both the waiting and the latest push to end it, and she's been candid that the neighborhood would like to see something that blends business and residence into an actual gathering place, not just another single-use lot.

So if you've been wondering why that corner still has a used car lot on it while the rest of the intersection has filled in around it, that's the answer. It's not neglect. It's a decade of a city trying to buy enough dirt to build something worth building.

The Corner That Got a Statue Instead of a Store

While the city waited on the last two parcels, it didn't leave the corner untouched. In April, Virginia Beach's Cultural Affairs Department dedicated Harbor of Stories, a public artwork built by Washington Glass Studio in collaboration with Kempsville residents, right there on the northeast corner at Witchduck and Princess Anne. The sculpture takes the shape of a schooner, a direct nod to the maritime trade that gave Kempsville its name (the area was originally Kempe's Landing, a shipping point on the Eastern Branch of the Elizabeth River). The glass panels that make up the piece weren't handed down from an artist's studio fully formed. Residents built them themselves, in hands-on workshops, which means some of the glass catching your eye at that light was shaped by someone who lives a few streets over.

The dedication didn't happen in isolation either. A few days earlier, on April 15, Virginia Wesleyan professor Stephen Mansfield gave a talk called "Defining Kempsville" at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, walking through the area's history for anyone who showed up. That's not a random venue. Emmanuel Episcopal's building dates to 1843, with portions of its original walls still standing, and its cemetery holds veterans from both sides of the Civil War. It's one of the few structures in the area old enough to have watched Kempsville become a landmark on the map long before it became an intersection you sit at in traffic.

Gribble described the sculpture as a landmark and gathering point representing community, local identity, and a sense of unity for the neighborhood. Whatever you make of the phrasing, the practical effect is real: the corner that took the city longest to figure out how to develop is the one the neighborhood decided to mark first, before a single commercial tenant moved in.

The Park Next Door Has Its Own Story

Kempes Landing Park, the green space just off that same intersection, opened in 2015 as the first completed phase of the broader Historic Kempsville redevelopment plan. It's small, about 3 acres, with a pavilion, a shared-use path just under half a mile long, and a historical marker that shows vintage photos of the old high school that once stood across the street.

The part most people driving past don't know: the ballfields the park replaced were once home to Kempsville Pony Baseball, and a kid who grew up playing on them, Al "Two Gun" Gettel, went on to pitch in the major leagues for a decade, taking the mound for the Yankees, the Cleveland Indians, and the Chicago White Sox between 1945 and 1955. He's buried in Emmanuel Episcopal's cemetery, a few hundred feet from where he first learned to throw a fastball. So the quiet walking loop behind the new sculpture isn't just a park. It's the same ground that sent a local kid to a World Series roster, memorialized now with a plaque instead of a pitcher's mound.

What's Actually There to Do About It

None of this requires a special trip. If you're walking Kempes Landing Park's loop or stopping to look at the sculpture, there's a real lunch crawl within a few minutes in either direction along Kempsville Road: Park Lane Tavern for something closer to a sit-down meal, Ynot Italian if you want pasta, and Winston's Café, which has been booking local and regional music acts on Kempsville Road since 1990, longer than most of the buildings around that intersection have looked the way they do now.

If you're heading to see the sculpture itself, parking is available in the vacant lots at 5131 Princess Anne Road and 445 Kempshire Lane, which is a fitting detail on its own. The easiest place to park and look at Kempsville's newest landmark is still, for now, undeveloped land.

The fourth corner won't stay a question mark forever. The city's request for proposals is out, and whatever gets built there will be the last piece of an intersection that's been under construction, in one form or another, for more than a decade. Until then, the schooner keeps watch over a corner that's equal parts finished and unfinished, which might be the most honest monument Kempsville could have built.

If you're curious what a home in this stretch of Kempsville is actually worth while the neighborhood keeps filling in around it, Carrie On Homes offers a free, no-pressure home valuation any time you want one.