Roanoke Lands 435 Jobs, a Tight-Budget Week, and the Grandin Digs In

Full Transcript

Intro

Alex: Welcome to The Roanoke Weekly. I’m Alex.

Morgan: And I’m Morgan. This is your locally curated, AI-narrated rundown of what happened around the Roanoke Valley this past week, and what’s coming up in the week ahead. Everything we cover comes from local reporting, this week the Roanoke Times, Cardinal News, WDBJ7, Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge, and the city’s own event calendar.

Alex: It’s a big week for the local economy, and honestly a bit of a heavy one in a few corners too. Budgets are tight, and you can feel it in a couple of these stories.

Morgan: But the weekend? The weekend is absolutely stacked. By the time we get there, you might want to clear your whole Saturday. So stick around. Let’s get into it.

The Lead: RINGANA Brings $85M and 435 Jobs to Roanoke

Alex: We’re starting with the biggest piece of news the valley has had in a long time. An Austrian company called RINGANA is coming to Roanoke, and it’s bringing eighty-five million dollars in investment and four hundred thirty-five jobs over the next five years.

The Roanoke Times reported that Governor Abigail Spanberger announced it on Friday. RINGANA makes skincare and nutritional products, vegan-based cosmetics and supplements, and this is going to be the company’s very first headquarters, production, and distribution operation in the United States. Right here.

Morgan: And here’s the part I love. They’re not building on some empty field. They’re moving into the old Johnson and Johnson building over in Blue Ridge Commerce Park, off Frontage Road, near the DayTec center and William Fleming High School. That space has been sitting partly empty since J&J left town back in the two thousands.

Alex: Right. John Hull, who runs the Roanoke Regional Partnership, worked on the deal, and he said the building fits what he called a highly sophisticated, clean manufacturing process, which is exactly what RINGANA needed. So an old industrial space gets a second life.

The Partnership is calling this the largest jobs announcement by a manufacturer new to this area in more than thirty years. Thirty years.

Morgan: So what kind of jobs are we talking about? Because four hundred thirty-five is a real number.

Alex: A range, from what Hull described. Lab and quality assurance work, office and management roles, manufacturing, distribution. They’ll scale up to that full count over five years, and there were already a couple of Virginia positions posted as of Friday. So if you’ve been keeping an eye out, it’s worth a look at their site.

Morgan: Old J&J building, brand new company, hundreds of jobs. That’s a good Monday.

Alex: That’s a good Monday. All right, into the rundown.

The Rundown: News & Notes

Morgan: Quick hits, here’s what else happened this week.

Alex: We’ll start with the Roanoke schools budget, because it landed this week and it wasn’t easy. The school board finalized its budget for the coming year on Tuesday night, and to balance it they had to cut fourteen million dollars.

The Roanoke Times reported that meant cutting about a hundred sixty positions. Around sixty-five of those were active employees, the rest were already vacant. Superintendent Verletta White said the goal was to protect classrooms as much as possible, and she described the central office staff being cut as, in her words, the connective tissue of the division. When you thin that out, she said, the people who remain are already carrying full loads.

Morgan: And it’s not just positions, right? Some actual programs got touched.

Alex: They did. Money came out of facilities and operations, activity bus service was reduced, the gifted program got consolidated, and the three-year-old preschool program is shrinking from nine schools down to three. A lot of that frustration went toward city council, which decides how much money the schools actually get, and the city was working through a nineteen-million-dollar shortfall of its own this year.

Morgan: Speaking of the city and tight budgets, here’s one that connects. The Roanoke Parks Foundation says it’s going to stop working with the city.

If you haven’t heard of them, the Parks Foundation is a nonprofit. They started back in 2022, and the whole idea was to raise private money and organize volunteers to make our parks better. And they delivered. Their big win was the Mill Mountain trail expansion last fall, about four miles of new trail, including a few just for bikes. A four hundred fifty thousand dollar project, and they beat their fundraising goal by two hundred grand.

Alex: So why are they walking away?

Morgan: A few reasons, and Cardinal News laid them out. The foundation’s president, David Olson, put it pretty bluntly. He said it just turned into a slog, that something that should have been positive and fun turned into a thing where they almost felt like they were bothering the city. They pointed to slow communication, rigid procurement rules, and the city declining a thirty-four thousand dollar matching request last year. And then council’s new budget cut parks maintenance funding for the next few years.

So you’ve got a volunteer group that raises its own money, deciding it’s done. That one stings a little, because that’s exactly the kind of civic energy you want to hold onto.

Alex: Yeah, that’s a tough one. Next up, a state report worth knowing about if you’ve got family out in the New River Valley.

A commission of the Virginia General Assembly found that thirteen of the state’s thirty-six rural hospitals are at risk of closing. Two of them are close to home. The Roanoke Times reported that Carilion Giles Community Hospital was flagged as facing what the report called immediate risk, and LewisGale Hospital Pulaski was on the broader at-risk list.

The reasons are a stack of pressures, low patient volume, weak negotiating power with insurers, low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, and anticipated federal funding cuts. Now, hospital leaders and some Republican lawmakers pushed back hard, saying the report overstates the danger. But the stakes are real. When a rural hospital closes, people drive farther for care, and sometimes they just skip it.

Morgan: That’s the kind of thing you don’t think about until it’s your emergency room. Okay, let’s lighten it up, because I’ve got a fun one.

The Grandin Theatre is digging a hole. Bear with me. Cardinal News reported that our beloved historic Grandin, the one in Grandin Village, is building a whole new underground space, dressing rooms, real restrooms, a shower, even a washer and dryer for performers.

Alex: Why underground?

Morgan: Because the building is from the 1930s, and there is basically no backstage. We’re talking eight feet of space behind the screen. It got so tight that one dance studio performing there had to walk their dancers outside to a neighboring restaurant just to use the bathroom before the show.

Alex: You’re kidding.

Morgan: I am not. So this is a five hundred thirty-five thousand dollar project, and about ninety-two percent of it is donor funded. And here’s why it matters beyond the plumbing. The Grandin has been reinventing itself, leaning into live performances on top of movies, and it sold around forty-five thousand tickets last year. So this is a little movie house betting on its own next chapter.

Alex: I love that the fix for a 1930s building is just, go down. And one more before we get to the weekend, and it’s a flattering one. Cardinal News dug into IRS data and found that the Roanoke Valley has become a landing spot for people leaving Fairfax County up in Northern Virginia.

For about a decade, the flow ran the other way, people leaving here for Fairfax. But since 2019, four out of five years have shown more people moving from Fairfax to Roanoke County than the reverse. People are choosing the valley. And on that note.

Morgan: On that note, let’s talk about why. Because there is a lot to do here this week. Here’s the week ahead.

The Week Ahead: Events

Early in the week is pretty mellow. If you’ve got kids, there’s an adventure play day hike for ages eight to eleven over at Fishburn Park on Tuesday, which is a nice way to get them outside.

Alex: Things pick up Thursday.

Morgan: Thursday is good. Party in Elmwood is back in Elmwood Park, that’s the downtown summer series, running five-thirty to eight-thirty. And then Thursday night, country singer Josh Turner is playing the Berglund Center at seven-thirty.

Alex: Josh Turner’s got that deep voice, that’s a good get for the Berglund.

Morgan: It is. Then Friday is Juneteenth, and there’s a lot woven through the weekend around it. Downtown has First Fridays at Five, the gallery and shopping evening, from five to nine-thirty. And out in Botetourt County, in Daleville, there’s the Juneteenth Freedom Jubilee. It actually spans Friday and Saturday, and all of it is free.

Alex: Tell me about that one, because it sounds like more than a single event.

Morgan: It is. Friday evening there’s a campfire conversation with Joseph McGill, who runs the Slave Dwelling Project, talking about preserving African American history. Then Saturday there’s a Run to Freedom 5K in the morning, and an afternoon celebration out at historic Greenfield with live music and a barbecue dinner. It’s a thoughtful way to mark the day, and it’s a bit of a drive, about twenty minutes out, but worth knowing about.

Alex: And Saturday in the city is packed.

Morgan: Saturday is the big one. The headliner, Darius Rucker is playing Elmwood Park at six.

Alex: Darius Rucker, that’s a name. Hootie himself.

Morgan: Hootie himself, downtown, outdoors, on a June evening. That’s a lineup. And he is not the only thing happening. Down on Market Street there’s Caribbica Fest, an outdoor Caribbean block party, music, food, island culture, going all day. There’s also the Rainbow Run, a 5K and 10K out on the Greenway at Rivers Edge that raises money for the Roanoke Diversity Center.

Alex: So between Rucker, the Caribbean festival, the Juneteenth events, and a run on the Greenway, you could basically build your whole Saturday downtown.

Morgan: You really could. Pick a couple, wander between them. That’s a perfect Roanoke summer Saturday. Oh, and one fun little thing I stumbled on that I didn’t know existed. Out at Natural Bridge State Park, they do a lantern tour. A guided, lantern-lit history walk down to the bridge after dark.

Alex: That sounds genuinely cool.

Morgan: Right? It runs Thursday nights all summer, it’s seven dollars for adults, four for kids. Heads up, it’s a hundred thirty-seven stairs, so wear good shoes. Not a this-week-only thing, just a neat one most people don’t know about. And Sunday is Father’s Day, so save a little energy for dad.

The Closer: Bobcat Kittens in Rehab

Alex: Good week. Let’s close it out with something that’ll make you smile.

Out at the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center here in the valley, the team is raising a litter of orphaned bobcat kittens. WDBJ7 and the Roanoke Times both featured them. The center is hand-rehabbing them with the goal of releasing them back into the wild once they’re old enough to fend for themselves.

Morgan: Baby bobcats. I can’t handle it.

Alex: They are very small and very fierce, apparently. It’s a reminder of the quieter work happening around here, people taking care of the wild things most of us never see. We’re rooting for them.

Morgan: Send them off strong, little guys.

Close

Alex: That’s the show. Thanks for spending part of your Monday with us.

Morgan: If you liked it, share it with a neighbor, that’s genuinely the best way to help us grow. We’ll see you next Monday.

Alex: See you next Monday. Take care of each other, Roanoke.