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Introduction
- Developer unsnarls traffic congestion
as part of the deal
- Sensitive project tests broker's
deal-making skills
- Shipbuilding complex boosts
downtown Newport News
- Turning Basin project could
be turning point for Canal Walk
- Other Nominees
All
aboard - Roanoke's downtown renovation preserves its
past
Location:
Downtown Roanoke
Developer: Private/public partnerships, nonprofit
ventures
Tenants:
Roanoke Higher Education Center, Roanoke Valley Convention
and Visitors Bureau, apartment dwellers, O. Winston
Link Museum
by
Laura Bland
Click
to enlarge |
Roanoke
was just the tiny burg of Big Lick when a Yankee banker
named Frederick J. Kimball chose it as the junction
for his newly consolidated railroad shortly after the
Civil War. Years later, the city became home to the
production of Norfolk & Western Railway's world-class
steam locomotives and the booming hub of N&W successor,
Nor-folk Southern. When NS moved to Norfolk in the 1980s,
it offered to donate its buildings to the city, but
no one wanted them. They stood vacant for years - sad
sentinels of the town's glorious railroad days.
Today,
the old railroad monuments are becoming as important
to the city's future as they were to Roanoke's past.
City leaders are investing about $60 million in an ambitious
initiative to wed Roanoke's railroad legacy with its
hopes to revive downtown. Already renovated are the
1931 Art Deco-style office buildings of the Norfolk
Southern Railway, where 13 colleges and universities
now hold classes to train workers in new jobs such as
biotechnology. Also in the works: converting a 1905-era
passenger station into a visitor's center and a museum
honoring the works of famed railroad photographer O.
Winston Link.
Behind
the renovations is a public/private partnership of civic
leaders, the business community, congressmen, state
politicians and educators. It wasn't until community
leaders rallied support and $40 million to reopen a
local landmark, the Hotel Roanoke - closed in 1989 and
donated by the railroad to the city and Virginia Tech
- that a consensus began to develop about the potential
of the city's dilapidated railroad buildings. In 1997
the Foundation for Downtown Roanoke assumed ownership
of the boarded-up railroad office buildings and the
passenger station. It later sold the station to Center
in the Square, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
supporting the region's cultural arts.
Matching
facilities to owners was one of the project's biggest
challenges, recalls Edwin C. Hall, the foundation's
president. "We knew what the community wanted to
see, what the business community wanted to see. ...
Finding the proper players for the facilities was a
totally different animal." Business and education
leaders pushed for a massive, $19 million renovation
of the railroad's main office buildings, which opened
in August 2000 as a center for higher education and
work force training. Today, the center's operations
director, Samuel Hayes III, finds himself working in
the same building where his grandfather spent 52 years
as a janitor for the railroad. "I wish my grandfather
was alive to see it," he says.
Work
is just beginning on the $10 million renovation of the
passenger station. A deal worked out with Link's estate
will bring his rail photography, equipment and notes
from his shoots to the station's museum. Financed with
state and federal tax credits as well as corporate donations,
the station is scheduled to open by March 2003.
Perhaps the thorniest issue in the Roanoke railroad
project involves the almost $12 million renovation of
Norfolk Southern's old General Office Building. City
leaders explored tearing it down, but building experts
said the building was so structurally sound that imploding
it would have destroyed half the city's downtown. So
the foundation asked the Roanoke Redevelop-ment and
Housing Authority to turn the building into upscale
apartments. It took three years and a mortgage with
a federal agency - which almost fell through at the
last minute - to finance Eight Jefferson Place, an 86-unit
building. Scheduled for completion this fall, it will
provide the largest concentration of residential housing
in Roanoke's downtown area.
It's
been a long haul, but slowly Roanoke's vision for downtown
seems to be rumbling along much like the locomotives
that used to roll past.
Return
to Virginia Business - April 2002
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