Will and Bill: Guy Love

Anybody who has lived in Virginia Beach for awhile will remember the zany antics of Will and Bill (Sessoms and Harrison) on the 31st Street Hotel development. You know, the deal where the last remaining publicly owned undeveloped oceanfront property, worth millions, was leased to two convicted criminals for a song to build a hotel, with the hotel to get a nice publicly funded parking garage with a few inaccessible public parking spaces on the top floors, as well as a small park with an impressive but underfinanced giant statue, and publicly paid entertainers serenading hotel guests, where before there had only been unsightly….

…. sand and oceanfront.

They will remember that Will and Bill wisely decided against running for re-election, and faded into the background to quietly support more wall-to-wall development in Virginia Beach.

So who could be surprised this week when a meeting at Bill’s law firm, Williams Mullen, emerged as the centerpoint of a scandal in which Will’s campaign is under criminal investigation for distributing illegal fliers that may have thrown the Virginia Beach mayoral election?

After all, Will and Bill can’t help themselves. It’s guy love.

Update: Here’s the latest funny math in support of the supposed success of the 31st Street Hotel project: The City nets $1.3 million per year on its $31.5 million “investment” ($11.5 million more than projected). The truth? That’s only 4% per year, and it doesn’t include the value of the Oceanfront tract that the City already owned.