Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508280123
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
When you'd drop by on a sultry summer afternoon, one would discretely corner you in the living room to spill her aggravations with her sister. Five minutes later, you'd be on the side porch listening to the other's catalog of daily irritations. It wasn't that they didn't love each other, it was just their lives were too close to ignore eccentricities.
In this community, the lives of the college and the town are just as closely intertwined.
In addition to the aggravations of proximity is the helpless feeling the town gets of constantly sitting next to a 600-pound gorilla. When Virginia Tech with its 23,880 students and $481.6 million budget shifts its weight, businesses in downtown Blacksburg can see their profits squashed or a whole new business opportunity open up.
The angry yelp heard from the Greater Blacksburg Chamber of Commerce this month when it learned of Tech's faculty incentives to bring conventions to the Hotel Roanoke was an expression of ongoing frustration with Virginia Tech.
Shop owners and restaurateurs struggling to keep their downtown businesses alive have seen more and more competition grow up on campus in the past several years - new bookstores and coffee shops, fast-food cafes and copy centers. Each new venture nibbles at their profits.
Add to this the stagnant size of the university in the past few years, the staff buyouts and early retirements that have also dampened local business and real estate.
Long-term growth and regionalism are sound and noble concepts. But when you're a business owner holding on by your hangnails, trying to create a niche between the twin Goliaths of Virginia Tech and Super Wal-Mart, it is tough not to think short term and worry if Tech's latest incentive will steer visitors' dollars from Blacksburg's Main Street to Roanoke's City Market.
Virginia Tech, likewise, has fewer options these days. It faces a money crunch - though on a more monumental scale - and sees its new campus ventures as both profit making and as a service to students.
The size of its investment in that historic hotel - and Roanoke's political and financial support during these embattled days for higher education - dictate that it make every strategic move practical to guarantee the hotel's survival.
It's easy to understand each side's motivations and frustrations. But Blacksburg and Virginia Tech have to dance together no matter how unhappy each is with the other's lead. So how can the two mosey in the right direction with as little damage to each other's toes as possible?
Each side could perhaps improve the situation.
Blacksburg could encourage more downtown businesses and restaurants that cater to an adult crowd and then market the shops and cafes to convention-goers. Already some new restaurants and night spots are opening, the Lyric Theatre may soon make a reappearance and some new retail stores will add diversity to the core of galleries and restaurants there. Such marketing may require combining efforts of the local chambers, merchants and governments.
Virginia Tech needs to show it cares for its smaller neighbors and see if it can work with the town to boost the convention business in Blacksburg as well as Roanoke.
As far as caring, Virginia Tech's first family, the Torgersens, have already scored points by opening The Grove, the president's home, to a kickoff for the Lyric's revitalization, a project dear to the hearts of Blacksburgers.
Those of us who call Blacksburg home also have a role.
Be daring. Ditch your car and spend a summer evening strolling College Avenue. Try dinner at The Cellar or Gillies or further up the hill at Bogen's, then walk along Main Street to window shop or pickup some hiking shoes at Eagle Express. If you go far enough, you can justify ending up at Mill Mountain Coffee & Tea for dessert. On weekends, shop for that inevitable June wedding present at galleries offering fine crafts and gourmet cookware.
In the winter, the walk gains enchantment from the town's shimmering holiday lights. Shops such as Main Street Bazaar stay open for evening browsers, making Christmas shopping relaxed and fun again.
A friend on the town council of that great metropolis of Buena Vista, a hard-bitten ex-Marine, has a favorite motto: "If you can't buy it in Buenie, you don't need it."
Maybe if more of us - townspeople, local government and college - accepted some of the responsibility for nourishing the shops that give our town such personality, they wouldn't be quite so nervous when that 600-pound gorilla shifts in its seat
Elizabeth Obenshain is The Roanoke Times' New River editor.
by CNB