
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 8, 1990                   TAG: 9006080547
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER MUNICIPAL WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ROANOKE GETS TAP ASSURANCE ON TRADE CENTER

Total Action Against Poverty won't do anything to interfere with Roanoke's plans for a convention and trade center and related development around Hotel Roanoke, says the president of the anti-poverty agency's board of directors.

As TAP's search for a new headquarters has progressed, Cabell Brand said Wednesday, he has been in contact with City Manager Robert Herbert and assured him that the agency wants to work with the city.

Some city officials fear that plans for a convention and trade center could be hampered if TAP moves its headquarters into the old Stone Printing Co. building on North Jefferson Street.

The building, now occupied by Frame One, a wholesale framing business, is next to Norfolk Southern Corp.'s old office buildings, the recommended site for a convention center.

TAP has taken a 90-day option on the Stone Printing building.

"We told them [TAP] that we prefer not be landlocked if the convention center is on the NS buildings' site," Vice Mayor Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr. said earlier this week.

Brand said the Stone Printing building is just one of the alternatives TAP is considering.

"We have a number of options and we're keeping them open, but TAP is not going to interfere with what the city is doing," Brand said.

One proposal that has been discussed privately would call for TAP to acquire the building that houses the administrative offices for the city school system (the old Booker T. Washington School on Douglas Avenue near Interstate 581 and Orange Avenue.)

Under that plan, the school administrative offices would move into the old Jefferson High School, which will be renovated and converted into an arts, educational and office complex.

Some TAP officials have looked at the school administration building, and Brand said he also plans to tour it.

Brand said TAP needs a building with at least 50,000 square feet so it can put all of its operations in a central location as quickly as possible. TAP can't wait two or three years to get a new headquarters, he said.

The anti-poverty agency lost its headquarters on Shenandoah Avenue Northwest to a fire Dec. 23.

by CNB