Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 9, 1993 TAG: 9311110498
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Marking the past, on the kind of magnificently crisp autumn afternoon that seems a Western Virginia specialty, stood the landmark hotel. Overlooking downtown Roanoke, her entrance served as backdrop for the platform from which the appropriate dignitaries were introduced and the appropriate remarks were made. Ceremonies came complete with peanuts, each package carrying the hotel's recipe for peanut soup, for the hundreds assembled.
Sadly vacant since being closed by Norfolk Southern and donated to Tech, the hotel already is undergoing renovations; reservations are being taken for dates beginning in early 1995.
Standing in for the future was a white line showing the footprint of the $12.8 million conference center, which will host continuing-education programs as well as conferences. Also on display was a sample of telecommunications equipment representing the world-class technology that the new building is designed to hold.
Nostalgia for the hotel's glory days has helped feed broad community support for reopening it. But if the project is about preserving an important architectural element and institution of Roanoke's and Southwest Virginia's past, it is even more about building for Roanoke's and Southwest Virginia's future. It is testimony to Roanoke's and Tech's capacity for leadership and vision.
"The open door of the Hotel Roanoke and the adjoining conference center," said acting Tech President Paul E. Torgersen, "will say something about our respect for yesterday - and our resolve for tomorrow. Through that door will walk people who recognize old values - and also those who look for new learning to find renewed vitality...."
Times change; demands change. The Hotel Roanoke once could prosper as a railroad hotel. It cannot today. The trains that run alongside the hotel grounds carry no passengers, only freight.
But neither, in the days when Roanoke was humming with rail passengers, was Virginia Tech a comprehensive research university; it was once a small military school tucked away in sleepy Blacksburg.
One enterprise - rail passenger service - fades (though perhaps a little more completely in Roanoke than was absolutely necessary). Other enterprises - a new public-private partnership, and a modern university, with its research life and outreach to the community - arise.
The hotel's best days seem still ahead.
by CNB