Two alternative designs were compared and evaluated for a shore protection project at the Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic, Dam Neck in Virginia Beach, Virginia. One alternative utilized an armored revetment to protect the shoreline and nearby facilities while the second alternative was a combination of a dune-beach nourishment project and a seawall buried beneath the dune. The criteria for comparison included function and constructibilty, life-cycle cost, environmental and aesthetic impact. To evaluate the above criteria for function and constructibilty, standard methods of coastal engineering were employed. To evaluate life cycle costs, damage curves were developed to estimate annual dune maintenance costs while using traditional means to estimate beach renourishment costs. Environmental and aesthetic impact was an exercise in public and end-user perceptions. In all of the criteria, the beach-dune-buried seawall system was found to be a superior solution for the Dam Neck project. Construction of the Dam Neck project is now complete and a three-year monitoring project has begun to evaluate project performance relative to design expectations.