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

DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994                   TAG: 9402250029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CENTER AS ANCHOR

IF IT LIVES up to anything approaching its potential as an economic-development anchor for the region, the Hotel Roanoke-conference center project will prove well worth the effort and resources invested in it.

The litany of potential benefits, noted on numerous occasions by Virginia Tech and city leaders, remains nonetheless impressive. And the university's continuing education programs and Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement, proposed for inside the conference facility, could make the good things happen:

The availability of sophisticated education and training programs for executives and professionals could only help the region's ability to keep existing businesses and attract new ones.

Visitors would spend money, primarily in downtown restaurants, shops and cultural attractions, but also across the region. And it wouldn't hurt to have more passengers using the airport.

Tech could expand and improve its continuing education and academic-conference activities, while updating its outreach mission as a land-grant research university. These are efforts appropriately supported by the entire state.

The center would offer an opportunity for high-tech local businesses, including those involved in communications and fiber optics, to showcase their technology.

Headquartering Tech's conference and training programs at the Roanoke center will help cement ties between the city and university - ties benefiting both partners.

Thousands of management types and professionals - certainly from Virginia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, and probably from throughout the mid-Atlantic - would be exposed to this corner of the world and its assets. Our assets are attractive enough to support the presumption that a higher profile would translate over time into increased investments here.

The knowledge and skills transmitted at the center should be useful in themselves, of course. There is also the prospect of electronically transmitting seminars around the state.

This is, in other words, many projects in one, with as many ways to advance the interests of Tech, the region and the state.

by CNB