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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 30, 1994                   TAG: 9411300056
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TECH STUDENTS GET EARLY GLIMPSE AT HOTEL ROANOKE

What the Virginia Tech senior saw instead looked more like any other upscale hotel. Nice, traditional, but little that suggested the imposing Tudor-style facade of Roanoke's former grande dame of hotels.

"When I looked at the outside it was more antique. When I came inside everything was the same. I expected more of a historic feeling," the hospitality-tourism management major said.

Those thoughts and others were echoed by Moon's classmates during a preview of two finished guest rooms.

The $29 million renovation job is expected to be finished early next year for a scheduled opening the first week in April.

When automakers roll a new model off the assembly-line, they make prototypes first. The hotel industry does the same thing with rooms, said hotel General Manager Gary Walton.

"When you do 300 rooms it's really important to do a couple to start ... to get everybody's blessing and input," he said.

Senior Joey Davis pronounced the decorating "very stately." While the cherry furniture looks solid and traditional, the deep colors and intricate fabric patterns give the rooms a rich feel, he said.

"It's still a modern establishment, but the colors and textures add a sophisticated, old Gothic feeling," junior George Davis said.

Matthew Stengel, a senior Tech architecture major, wished that ornate woodwork in the public rooms - which workers laboriously have protected wherever possible - had been carried through into guest rooms.

"Instead, you've got wrap-around vinyl baseboard," he said, nodding toward the bottom of one wall. A framed collage of old hotel postcards, hanging on another wall, "is a neat idea, but tacky," he opined.

In addition to the regular guest rooms, the hotel will have 19 suites in five sizes. The biggest is the Governor's Suite, which occupies the entire seventh floor and is roughly the size of a luxury two-bedroom apartment.

There also are parlor suites, junior suites, VIP suites and four hospitality suites. One of those is designated as the Alumni Suite. Virginia Tech students can expect to see some familiar colors in there.

"It's heavily toward Virginia Tech but we can't say that because there are some other schools in the area," confided Celeste Becker, the hotel's Atlanta-based interior designer.

A total of 194 rooms will have two double beds, although the ones on display looked more like oversized twins. Another 81 rooms each will have one king-sized bed; 38 rooms will contain single queen-sized beds.

About 100 of the rooms will not have closets, because space was sacrificed to enlarge formerly tiny bathrooms. Instead, there are large armoires that double as TV stands.