ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 1996 TAG: 9603270008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
An overnight success it was not.
Perhaps it was no surprise. Everything about the Roanoke Civic Center took time.
The first two proposed locations were rejected. It took three tries to pass the $7 million bond issue to fund it - an amount that proved inadequate as costs rose.
Troubles hardly ended with the ground-breaking. Once work was under way, the contractor was picketed for failing to participate in a union-approved apprenticeship program.
There was even a dispute about the final color - given as white, despite complaints the complex would end up looking like a mausoleum. (In fact, the walls are a kind of pebbly blond.)
"It was a hard-fought battle to get it there," said Warner Dalhouse, an early supporter. "But it was worth every bit of it. And we'd be a far poorer community if it wasn't there, in my opinion."
Did anyone remember the cake?
The Roanoke Civic Center is 25 years old today.
It opened, after much anguish and long debate, on March 27, 1971. A decade in the planning, three years in the building, it opened with great fanfare. News accounts detail a concert by the U.S. Marine Corps Band, earnest speeches by state and local dignitaries and the presence of 35 "girl guides" in hot pants. There was also a display of moon rocks.
"This just couldn't be nicer," gushed Gov. Linwood Holton, who attended. "This is a symbol for the good life, and we are proud."
City Manager Julian Hirst managed to quote both Patrick Henry and Edgar Allen Poe before summing things up with Shakespeare:
"Confusion," said Hirst, quoting from "MacBeth," "now hath made his masterpiece."
Indeed. It was behind schedule, and at $14.1 million, way over initial cost estimates.
Even on opening day, it was incomplete - the finish date was still several months away. Prior commitments and debt service had forced the city's hand.
Perhaps worst of all, neighbor Salem had beaten Roanoke to the punch - opening a center of its own when the two cities could not agree on a joint project.
None of which meant much to the awestruck opening-day crowd.
One reporter described the mood as "almost reverent."
"It changes my impression of Roanoke," a visitor said. "It's beautiful.''Twenty five years, of course, will take the bloom off anything.
Once described as the centerpiece of the city's urban renewal project, the center, with its dirty white walls, concrete columns and boxy lines, suggests nothing so much now as a kind of classy warehouse. Driving past it, one thinks of other arenas in gloomy, low-lying areas of big cities - of places people visit only for a reason.
People lived here once. The center occupies a part of town razed in the '60s for urban renewal. - if "renewal" is the right word for the result: a swath of car dealerships, fast food joints and chain motels.
"It was just land they wanted to make available for things more attractive for the city," recalled Jack Goodykoontz, a chamber of commerce staffer from the '60s.
When the center opened, Goodykoontz noted, residents "were proud of it. It brought in programs that were never available to us before."
Kathleen Ross lived in a house in what is now the Civic Center parking lot. She held out long after most of the houses around her were gone - insisting the city pay her what she thought her home was worth.
"I told them that I would be willing to sell it if they would give me a decent price," she said. Eventually, they did.
She has no hard feelings.
"It's a nice place," Ross says of the center. She has been there herself to see Natalie Cole, Tom Jones and The Jackson Five.
It was always about money.
Seen from the very start as a boon to the local economy, the center runs an annual operating deficit of about $700,000, said its manager, Bob Chapman.
But that's the short view. In 1994-95 alone the center attracted some 587,000 visitors, who pumped nearly $39 million into the surrounding area, according to the center's figures.
The intangible benefits may run higher. Dalhouse can't recall how many times he has picked up an industrial prospect at the airport and then driven by the center on the way into town - mentioning in passing that the center's auditorium is where the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra hangs its hat.
Invariably, he said, the prospect's eyes light up.
"If we only attracted one industry every four or five years because of the civic center, it's worth it," Dalhouse said.
Roanoke has had other gathering places through the years.
A century ago it had the "opera house," located on the second floor of the city's market building, according to a 1973 article by Roanoke World-News editorial page editor M. Carl Andrews. Soon leading citizens - believing the lack of a real municipal auditorium was costing Roanoke businesses - began beating the drums for something more substantial. The Roanoke Auditorium, located in front of the railroad station, opened in 1916 and hosted hundreds of dances and other event before it burned in 1957.
Suddenly the city was, so far as big auditoriums go, left high and dry. The long push for a civic center began.
A bond issue for the project failed twice, narrowly, before finally passing in 1966.
The opening five years later, said a newspaper editorial, was an event to excite "governor and average Joe alike."
The excitement must have faded fast.
Maybe Roanokers just couldn't believe it was really here at last. But, as World-News columnist Mike Ives noted in a March 29, 1971, column, the first few events were duds.
Early management seemed to have an aversion to big, lucrative rock concerts - preferring instead such geezer-pleasers as the Stars of the Lawrence Welk Show; a variety show headlined by "I Dream of Jeannie" star Barbara Eden; and ``Tonight Show'' band leader Doc Severinsen.
Perhaps the nadir was an appearance by Wayne Newton in October. The home-town hero bombed - drawing 911 people to the 11,000 seat coliseum.
The first sellout?
Elvis Presley, on April 11, 1972.
Since then -
Well, 25 years in the life of a civic center is a long, long time.
You could sum it up like this:
In a quarter century, 12,831,514 people have visited the Roanoke Civic Center - one for nearly every dollar it took to build it. They spent $61 million on tickets.
Or like this:
Elvis was here. Not once, not twice, but three times.
Think of it: Dick Clark came through Roanoke on his American Grandstand tour. The Detroit Pistons played the Seattle Supersonics in the Civic Center. Dusty Rhodes once wrestled here.
There have been Broadway shows, Methodist conventions and a circus. "Les Mis" was here. So were the Chippendale dancers - and, for awhile, a heavy-metal band every week. Ozzy Osborne came, and Whitesnake and Def Leppard. Country fans got Reba McEntire, Randy Travis, Garth Brooks, Dolly Parton and Travis Tritt.
The Grateful Dead's two concerts here in 1987 were in a category by themselves, said center manager Chapman. The group's equally famous fans, the Deadheads, scattered weirdness, not to mention trash and drugs - there were several narcotics arrests - about the center's grounds.
But Chapman recalled that many of the kids made an effort to police the grounds themselves. Two who couldn't afford concert tickets even asked for trash bags to use in tidying up the grounds while the band played. "They spent the entire evening picking up trash," said Chapman, still amazed. "That's the gospel truth."
As for the performance itself, "I thoroughly enjoyed it," Chapman said. City leaders enjoyed it less - informing Chapman that the next time he booked the Grateful Dead, he might first let them know.
Of course, it's hard to top the King.
"There was something about an Elvis Presley concert - it's hard to explain," Chapman said. "You could just see it in people's faces. They were just totally overwhelmed."
Reminiscences aside, Chapman isn't letting sentiment cloud his judgment. He said a birthday celebration might be held later this year, when the calendar is empty.
"We're thinking about it," he said. But it won't happen if there is a chance to book a money-making act instead. A top-shelf performer can bring in $25,000 or more for the center, through stadium rental fees and concessions.
"I'm not going to lose the revenue," Chapman said.
LENGTH: Long : 163 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: File. 1. Ground-breaking for the Civic Center was heldby CNBJune 15, 1966. 2. Twenty-five years ago today, the Roanoke Civic
Center was dedicated with speeches by dignataries and a
ribbon-cutting ceremony. 3. In 1970, construction was nearing the
finish. WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 4. Civic Center manager Bob Chapman
recalls with fondness the two concerts performed by The Grateful
Dead in 1987. 5. Downtown Roanoke in 1957 (left), before the
construction of Interstate 581 and the Roanoke Civic Center
(above).