Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407120012
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
James recalled how her anxiety level zoomed when she visited Exposiac Industries, the Fredericksburg manufacturer of the panels, to approve their color as a match to the concrete base of Hotel Roanoke, which adjoins the center.
That was a $950,000 decision. James said she didn't feel totally comfortable until Roanoke City Manager Bob Herbert watched the first panels go up in late June, and said:
"Terrific. It's beautiful."
The staff, a combination of city and Virginia Tech employees, has been the human underpinning for the $42 million hotel and conference center project. And they know where the buck stops.
"There's nobody back behind me to go to," said Brian Wishneff, the city's chief of economic development who, as acting director of the commission, also is head of the staff.
In April 1993, Wishneff, James and Kim Carico, all city employees, and Mode Johnson, assistant to the vice president at Virginia Tech, moved into rented quarters in Franklin Plaza, a downtown Roanoke office building.
The rest of the commission staff consisted of an office assistant, a position now held by Merle Martin, a former Gardner-Denver Mining & Construction employee, and Alvin Nash, deputy director of Total Action Against Poverty, who was assigned to the project to assure involvement by minorities and women. Nash has returned to his position with TAP.
Carico said Nash's office is now referred to as putting-green space, although there is no reason to think anyone has had time to play golf.
Every member of the commission staff says this project has been different from anything they've encountered before, because there are so many different groups involved.
The players are as numerous as a film's credits, except there's nothing as exotic as a Gaffer or a Key Grip. There is, however, a commission chairman - City Councilman Jim Harvey - who keeps reminding the group that the hotel dining room had better not have anything as plebian as a buffet line.
Even though the staff won't decide things such as the hotel's menus, it is selling bricks that citizens can put their names on and have laid in the hotel entrance plaza. And it has handled every detail of contracts for the project and served as the main artery for community opinion.
Martin said it's routine to get a call from a resident who just wants to know how the project is coming along.
The project is viewed as both a preservation and an economic development showcase for the community.
The city is building the conference center with $12.8 million in public money. Virginia Tech, through a limited-liability company, Hotel Roanoke LLC, is using both public and private money to renovate the hotel. Other players include Faison & Associates of Charlotte, N.C., the development company; F.N. Thompson of Charlotte and J.M. Turner Co. of Roanoke, general contractors; and Doubletree Hotels Corp. of Phoenix, which will manage both facilities. Each has its own cast of workers.
"There are 10 to 15 different firms or groups that I have to deal with," said Johnson, and he has fewer entities involved in his decisions than does the conference center crew.
"We figure there are over 25 different organizations we're working with," said Johnson, who has helped manage construction projects for Tech since 1977.
He worked with the $7 million Marion du Pont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg; a $16 million telecommunication computer center that involved creating a computer and fiber optic infrastructure for the Tech campus; and on the initial phases of the $30 million Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg.
"This has been the most challenging," he said.
Wishneff, in his 14 years in economic development, also has had his share of special projects. The most recent was Roanoke's First Union Tower, which included a city-owned parking garage tied to a private office building.
"My God, I thought nothing could be more complicated than that," Wishneff said. But "the tower was minor league compared to this thing."
The hotel-conference center project "is under a tremendous microscope," he said. "Everything is subject to criticism ... the wrong color, the wrong contract."
In addition to involving the community's highest-profile piece of real estate on North Jefferson Street, the project also rises above the ordinary because it involves disruption of the city's oldest community, Gainsboro; involves considerable public money as well as numerous small donations; and has been promised as a panacea for the city's lack of growth.
"I have to keep saying to myself that the majority of people - even those unhappy - want the project done," Wishneff said.
Herbert said he selected Wishneff to head the commission staff for several reasons. Wishneff had been involved in the project from the beginning and deserves much of the credit for its happening, Herbert said. Plus "Brian doesn't know about 8-to-5 hours, and it was Brian or I."
"I knew I needed a team, so I hired to his weaknesses. I hate to call it that, but that's what it was," Herbert said.
Herbert said Wishneff's strength is in "conceptual upstream thinking," which makes him often appear to be "wandering in the weeds" when he's just seeing the potential of things eight to 10 years hence.
"I needed someone to balance Brian, to be a neat, detailed, orderly, focused kind of person who can take `why don'ts' and implement them," Herbert said.
James, the city librarian, came to mind for several reasons, Herbert said. First, James had a strong manager, Emily Keyser, who could run the library in James' absence. And he knew James wanted to do something other than the library job. Herbert said James once asked if James could head refuse collection.
Third, Herbert said, James had experience with construction projects. She oversaw the construction of a library in Kentucky and the construction of four libraries and renovation of two others when she worked in Charlotte.
A natural for the third team member was Kim Carico, Wishneff's secretary in the municipal economic development department.
Actually, the commission staff consists of two teams that interact. The hotel and conference center projects are separate ventures. The hotel renovation works more like a private project. Purchases, for example, can be made without advertising for bidders.
Conference center purchases require the same scrutiny as those made by any city department.
Sometimes, though, Wishneff said, words such as "no favoritism" and "fairness" are not necessarily compatible with the first goal of the project - to watch costs, "stick to the bottom line."
The marriage of the two types of projects has been a nightmare at times, all agree.
"It was a big decision to allow Doubletree to manage both facilities," said Wishneff. "It sets up a lot of complications, because there are so many agreements."
Even electricity use will have to be monitored separately for each facility. A good part of one commission meeting, for example, was spent discussing how meters would be placed so this could be done.
On top of the effort that has to be made to be sure the facilities are separate but equal, commission staffers say they feel as if they are constantly in school.
"We just learned that chairs have ratings by hours," said Carico.
James and Carico had to define ILD, Indent Load Deflection, in the bidding packages that went out recently to potential suppliers of chairs for the conference center meeting rooms.
So what is ILD?
"It's how much the cushion goes down when you sit on it and how fast it pops up after you get up," said Carico.
by CNB