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

DATE: MONDAY, November 13, 1995                   TAG: 9511140013
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VIEWPOINT

SHY of skyscrapers, downtown Roanoke has never had a high-rise public restaurant. For two decades, though, it has had the private Jefferson Club, where members and their guests could enjoy a spectacular view of mountains surrounding the city and downtown landmarks, including (before the First Union Tower was built) a post-card pretty view of Hotel Roanoke.

The scheduled closing next month of the Jefferson Club - on the 16th floor of what's now the First Union Bank Building - is a loss for more than its members.

For one thing, it has been an economic-development asset - a convivial and cosmopolitan atmosphere in which to talk business over breakfast, lunch or dinner. And, private club or not, it was never snooty. It began as an alternative to the then-discriminatory Shenandoah Club. Its open-membership policy has stood in contrast to the exclusionary elitism of many private clubs.

Not just for business meetings and power lunches, the Jefferson Club has been a favorite setting for civic clubs and social events, including wedding receptions, birthday parties and baby showers. It served as downtown's uptown community clubhouse.

But it depended mostly on business-related memberships, and these have been declining. Roanoke's loss of Norfolk Southern Corp's headquarters in 1982, and the 1993 acquisition of Dominion Bankshares by First Union Corp. of Charlotte, N. C., depleted the pool of top executives based in the downtown area, contributing to the fall-off in the club's membership rolls.

On top of that, the high-rise club has been brought down by changes in federal tax laws. The price of business lunches no longer is a 100-percent-deductible business expense. Dues for private clubs no longer are deductible as business expenses. As a result, more area companies have limited the number of club memberships they buy for their executives.

As inevitable perhaps as the railroad and bank decisions were, and as desirable as it was to close loopholes in federal tax laws, the Jefferson Club's decision to close is another piece of evidence that local businesses aren't entirely the masters of their own fates.

by CNB