MOCA Left The Boardwalk. Its Biggest Weekend Didn't.
September 10, 2026
September 10, 2026
"This is a special piece of property in Virginia Beach. It's a beautiful building, beautiful scenery, and I think if we try to do anything other than something similar to its current use, we'd be run out of town."
That's Virginia Beach City Councilmember Stacy Cummings, talking about 2200 Parks Avenue, the building most people at the Oceanfront still think of as the art museum. It isn't, anymore. Virginia MOCA closed those doors for good on January 11, 2026, after 37 years in the space, and reopened on the campus of what was then Virginia Wesleyan University that April.
If you've noticed the building sitting quiet since, you've probably assumed the whole story left with the museum. It didn't. The museum's move is finished and, by most accounts, going well. What's still unresolved is a separate, much slower question about a piece of city property that has almost nothing to do with contemporary art anymore and everything to do with zoning maps, flood lines, and a noise zone from Naval Air Station Oceana. Those are two different stories. Most coverage has treated them as one.
MOCA's new home sits on the university campus, about 20 minutes from where the museum used to be. According to the museum's own leadership, that shift in location puts roughly 1.7 million more people within a 50-mile radius than the old Parks Avenue site did. The new building runs more than 35,000 square feet, funded in part by a $25 million gift, and adds roughly 20 percent more exhibition and education space than the museum had before. It opened to the public April 18, with a ribbon cutting ten days earlier.
The timing wasn't coincidental. The Batten family, whose philanthropy helped fund the relocation, is also the reason Virginia Wesleyan University became Batten University on July 1, 2026. The campus itself changed its name in the same season the museum finished moving onto it. If you're trying to find MOCA by its old address, or by searching for it on the campus of a school called Virginia Wesleyan, you'll come up empty on both counts now.
None of this is in question. The museum made its decision in 2023, spent close to three years building toward it, and landed exactly where it said it would.
Here's the part that surprises people who assume MOCA's departure meant a clean break from the Oceanfront. It didn't work that way.
The Boardwalk Art Show, the outdoor exhibition MOCA grew out of in the first place, is still coming to the boardwalk this fall. Its roots trace to a 1952 benefit art sale organized by what was then the Virginia Beach Art Association, and the show became a formal annual event in 1956. Run the math and 2026 lands on the 70th edition, taking place October 9 through 11, presented by Atlantic Union Bank. MOCA still organizes it. More than 150 juried artists are expected, selected from an applicant pool that regularly runs into the hundreds. The Best in Show prize, sponsored by Joan Brock, is $10,000 this year, part of roughly $20,000 in total awards.
MOCA also kept a smaller, permanent footprint close to the water. The museum runs a satellite gallery at Towne Pavilion II, a few blocks from the Oceanfront in the ViBe Creative District. So the museum didn't vanish from the neighborhood. It shrank its year-round physical presence there while keeping its signature public event exactly where it's always been.
That's the first piece of information gain worth sitting with. An institution can outgrow a building without abandoning what made it matter to the people who live near it.
The old building is where the story actually gets complicated, and it has nothing to do with MOCA anymore.
The city owns 2200 Parks Avenue outright. It was built in 1989 as the Virginia Beach Arts Center, ran 37,829 square feet, and picked up American Alliance of Museums accreditation in December 2010, which is when the Virginia Beach Arts Center formally became Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. The property itself sits on roughly 9.6 acres, and the constraints on what can go there next are more specific than most people realize:
That last point matters more than it sounds. It means no amount of rezoning creativity turns this into condos or a hotel annex. Whatever comes next has to look something like what was already there.
The city has already run a formal process to figure out what that might be. Last spring, the Office of Economic Development issued a request for information asking cultural and nonprofit groups to propose reuses, ranging from performing arts programming to museums to culinary arts space. A site tour for interested parties happened in late April 2025, and submissions closed in June. Nine proposals came in, including unsolicited interest from another museum, a naval museum concept, a theater group, and early inquiries about a public library.
Then, in January 2026, the process stalled. City Council reviewed the nine proposals and paused without picking one, and without much public explanation for the pause.
"RAC members are increasingly concerned that the building and property at 2200 Parks Avenue may be left vacant and insufficiently managed, placing this $7 million cultural asset at risk."
That's from a letter sent to council after the pause, referring to the city's own $7.1 million assessed value for the land and building. Keeping the building in working order currently runs the city roughly $250,000 a year, and near-term capital needs including window, door, and roof replacement add up to close to a million dollars more.
Since January, the city hasn't announced a tenant. What it has done is create a public process for figuring out what residents actually want there. Mayor Bobby Dyer convened what's being called the Mayor's 2200 Parks Avenue Advisory Panel, and on July 27, 2026, the city held a community listening session inside the empty building itself, an open house format where residents could walk the space and weigh in on priorities before any decision gets made.
That session happened about six weeks ago. As far as public record shows, nothing has been finalized since. If you live near the Oceanfront and pass that building on your walk to the boardwalk or your drive down Parks Avenue, the honest answer to "what's happening with it" is: a resident-input process is still underway, and the building is still standing empty while it plays out.
So here's where the two threads actually meet. The museum's relocation was a clean, funded, three-year plan that ended exactly where it was supposed to. The building it left behind is stuck in a much slower civic process shaped by wetlands, noise zones, and a paused council vote, one that has nothing left to do with MOCA at all except the empty rooms.
When the Boardwalk Art Show sets up along the boardwalk this October for its 70th year, it'll be doing what it's done since 1956, regardless of what eventually happens at 2200 Parks Avenue. Both things are true about the neighborhood right now: the tradition carried on exactly where it always has, and the building next door to where it started is still waiting for someone to decide what it becomes.
If you're the kind of Oceanfront resident who tracks what's actually changing in this neighborhood, and not just what a tourism site tells you to visit, that's the kind of local detail worth having. Michael Rowland keeps close to the civic and cultural threads that shape life here, not because it sells houses, but because understanding a place well enough to live in it and understanding it well enough to help someone buy or sell in it turn out to be the same skill. If you ever want to talk through what's changing in your corner of Virginia Beach, reach out.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
We pride ourselves on providing personalized solutions that bring our clients closer to their dream properties and enhance their long-term wealth. Contact us today to find out how we can be of assistance to you!