The walk-up Dairy Queen that has scooped soft-serve along Virginia Beach's Oceanfront for decades is slated to close for good in October 2027, and city officials want to turn the building into a temporary police substation once the shop shuts its windows. The plan would move police from their current 21st Street location into the 17th Street property, right in the heart of the resort strip.
According to The Virginian-Pilot, the move is being described by a city council member as a plan to relocate the Oceanfront substation temporarily into the Dairy Queen building. Vice Mayor Rosemary Wilson told the Resort Advisory Commission that the substation would shift into the space after the ice cream shop closes, and she said having police centrally located there would be wonderful, per the same report.
A $12.8 Million Deal Years in the Making
The arrangement traces back to a 2022 purchase, when Virginia Beach bought the Dairy Queen building and the adjacent 17th Street park from longtime owner Richard Maddox for $12.8 million, according to WAVY.com. The station reported that Maddox sold both the Dairy Queen and the more than 900-square-foot stage and lawn to the city, which then leased the land back to him for $100,000 a year so the store could keep operating. Under that arrangement, Maddox leases the Dairy Queen property back from the city for five years, the outlet reported.
The valuation behind that sale has drawn scrutiny. The Virginian-Pilot reported in 2022 that the city's own assessment of the Dairy Queen parcel, a brick patio and the stage area came to about $6 million, while WAVY.com reported that the $12.8 million sale price was $8.3 million more than the city's assessed value for the site. Neither report reconciles the gap between those figures.
A Beachfront Landmark With Deep Roots
The Oceanfront's relationship with Dairy Queen goes back generations. John Maddox opened the resort's first Dairy Queen at 27th Street and Atlantic Avenue in 1949, and he and his wife, Gladys, later ran the Sea Escape Motel starting in 1964. Richard Maddox demolished that motel in 1995 and built the stage, park and current Dairy Queen building, complete with public restrooms, in its place, opening the ice cream franchise adjacent to the boardwalk that same year. In its first year, the shop became the chain's highest-grossing walk-up location in the United States.
Maddox also leased the park to the city for 27 years at no cost before the Maddox family spent $1.2 million developing 17th Street Park and leasing it back to Virginia Beach for 99 years, according to the 2022 Virginian-Pilot report. The city has held live performances on the park's stage throughout the summer months. Reflecting on the shop's coming closure, Maddox offered a simple line reported by The Virginian-Pilot: “All good things come to an end.”
Violence at the Oceanfront Pushed Police to Expand
The push for a stronger police presence near 17th Street follows a violent stretch at the Oceanfront. Police Chief Paul Neudigate reported that hundreds of teens and young adults had gathered around the park after dark, and that a shooting caused a crowd to stampede toward the Dairy Queen parking lot before additional shots were fired. Two shootings over five weeks in spring 2026 injured 14 people, ages 17 to 24, according to the Daily Press.
In response, the Virginia Beach City Council authorized an emergency all-ages curfew following the spring shootings, approving a 9:30 p.m. restriction for three nights. A judge halted that emergency curfew after two nights, finding that it did not comply with state law. The Daily Press also reported that Police Chief Neudigate said the department was 87 officers short at the time, calling it almost an entire precinct, and that Council Member Worth Remick suggested adding another police substation or precinct in the resort area.
How the Current Substation Has Performed
Virginia Beach police opened their existing Oceanfront substation in a former bar at 21st Street and Atlantic Avenue in 2023, spending $850,000 to retrofit the space. The Virginian-Pilot reported at the time that the renovation carried a price tag of $849,047, with the city making a one-time payment of $135,000 at the lease signing and paying $60,000 annually in rent — though the city now leases the current substation for $60,000 per month, per the seed reporting. The five-year lease includes an option to renew for another five years.
Inside, the substation features workstations, a television displaying live surveillance of resort-area streets, a conference room and a kitchen, the newspaper's 2023 account noted. Police also added more lighting, shot-detector equipment, surveillance cameras and drones, and Captain Harry McBrien has said the Oceanfront now has between 80 and 100 cameras monitoring the area, according to WAVY.com. McBrien has credited those measures with results: just for the block containing the substation, he said, there has been a 67% reduction of violent crime since police bought out the lease on the building's prior tenant, the former Boxx Bar. The Virginian-Pilot separately reported in 2023 that McBrien described notable reductions in violent crime and shootings at the Oceanfront that year following the safety upgrades.
Once the Dairy Queen closes, the building will have a parking lot facing Atlantic Avenue, a detail that could factor into how police use the space. The city may also repurpose the current substation space after officers move out, though no specifics on that plan, or on the design, duration or cost of a Dairy Queen substation, have been detailed publicly.
