Wood Haven Sells Behind Closed Doors, Roanoke Buys Ole Monterey, and Fall Arrives
Monday, September 14, 2026
Two big pieces of Roanoke land changed hands this week, one in the open and one behind a closed door. Friday evening the Western Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority came out of closed session and authorized the sale of land at Wood Haven Technology Park, then released nothing else — no buyer, no price, no stated use. The Roanoke Times ran it as a "secretive land sale" and reported the 111-acre site at the Interstate 81 and 581 interchange is widely expected to become a data center. Ten citizens filled the entire thirty-minute public comment period in opposition, with the crowd spilling out of the boardroom. Afterward Vice Mayor Terry McGuire and Councilman Phazhon Nash issued a joint statement saying a majority of council had given the city manager consensus to proceed, and that they are opposed — citing a Washington Post–Schar School poll showing 35 percent of Virginia voters are comfortable with new data centers in their community, down from 69 percent in 2023. The same statement promised to fight any data center at Ole Monterey, the 236-acre former golf course in northeast Roanoke that council voted Tuesday to buy for $8 million. The city lists a possible school campus, housing, parks and recreation, and industrial development among its options. The Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation has the property on its endangered sites list: it's the second-oldest course in the valley, on land once owned by Colonel William Fleming, who is buried there. In the Rundown: an outside study found Roanoke's planning department hobbled by a prolonged leadership void, a vacancy rate that hit 36 percent, and what developers called a "culture of no," though the city says its permit backlog is already dropping. Preston Park Elementary opened in northeast Roanoke, replacing a 1952 building so crowded that teachers were holding class in hallways. Around the region, Franklin County's supervisor fight ended with Mike Meredith dropping his claim and Bonnie Law appointed to the Boone District seat, Bedford County's school board weighed four options that all involve closing a second elementary school, and Christiansburg tightened its rules on any future data center. A farm in northwest Roanoke is opening a neighborhood grocery store, in a city where most national chains sit on the edges or outside the line entirely. And a new report says the region needs about 9,000 more health care workers, more than 3,000 of them registered nurses. The Week Ahead: Mill Mountain Theatre opens "Oklahoma!," Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood play the Harvester, Radford's Tartan 5K runs the greenway at twilight and Salem screens "How to Train Your Dragon" in Kiwanis Park, early in-person voting opens Friday, the Henry Street Heritage Festival returns to Elmwood Park for its 35th year, more than twenty high school bands compete at Salem Football Stadium, Mill Mountain Zoo marks International Red Panda Day, Opera Roanoke opens its 51st season with "La Traviata," and fall festival season starts at three farms at once. Closing the show: two brothers direct the marching bands at Northside and Hidden Valley, and once a year both bands call the same game the Galyen Bowl.
Intro
Alex: Welcome to The Roanoke Weekly. I’m Alex.
Morgan: And I’m Morgan. This is your locally curated, AI-narrated look at what happened around the Roanoke Valley this past week, and what’s coming up in the next one.
Alex: Everything here comes from local newsrooms doing the actual reporting. The Roanoke Times, Cardinal News, WSLS 10, and WDBJ7. If a story matters to you, go read their version of it.
Morgan: This week, a lot of Roanoke ground changed hands. People have opinions about that.
Alex: And then by Saturday, fall just sort of arrives. All at once. Let’s get into it.
The Lead: Two Pieces of Roanoke Land
Alex: We’re starting with land. Two pieces of it, both big, both decided this week.
Friday evening, the Western Virginia Regional Industrial Facility Authority came out of a closed session and voted to authorize the sale of land at Wood Haven Technology Park. Then it released nothing else. No buyer, no price, no stated use. The Roanoke Times ran it under the headline “Secretive land sale approved,” and reported the site is widely expected to become a data center.
Wood Haven is a hundred and eleven acres right at the interchange of Interstates 81 and 581, seven miles from downtown. Six local governments own it together, Roanoke’s share being forty-four percent, and as of 2023 the Times reported nine point three million dollars in local money had gone into it while they looked for a tenant.
Morgan: The room was not quiet about it. Cardinal News and WDBJ7 reported that ten people filled the entire thirty minutes of public comment, all of them opposed, with the crowd spilling out of the boardroom. Speakers raised environmental and health concerns and said they believe a data center is planned. Congressional candidate Beth Macy was there, and spoke against it too.
Alex: Afterward, Vice Mayor Terry McGuire and Councilman Phazhon Nash put out a joint statement. A majority of council, they said, had given the city manager consensus to let the process move forward, and they wanted their constituents to know they’re opposed. Their line was that supporting growth does not mean approving every project or type of development. They also cited a Washington Post and Schar School poll. Thirty-five percent of Virginia voters say they’re comfortable with new data centers in their community. In 2023 it was sixty-nine.
Morgan: And the statement didn’t stop at Wood Haven. They also said they’d fight any effort to put a data center on the Ole Monterey property. Which is the other piece of land.
Alex: Right. Tuesday, council approved buying the former Ole Monterey Golf Club. Two hundred thirty-six acres in northeast Roanoke, off Tinker Creek Lane, eight million dollars. The city’s release lists the possibilities: a school campus, housing, parks and recreation, manufacturing and industrial development. And it sits next to the Roanoke Center for Industry and Technology. The city’s economic development director, Marc Nelson, said they recognized it immediately as critical to Roanoke’s future. That’s the Times, Cardinal News and WDBJ7.
Morgan: There’s real history on that ground. The Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation put it on its endangered sites list this year. It’s the second oldest course in the valley, on land once owned by Colonel William Fleming, a Revolutionary War era doctor. He and his wife are buried there, on a parcel the city didn’t buy, so access comes by easement. Alison Blanton of the foundation told the Times she’d hoped it would stay a golf course, and that if it’s developed, she hopes that honors the history.
Alex: The city says no development decisions have been made. McGuire said he’s concerned about public input and will push hard for the process to be transparent. He called it a once in a generation opportunity, and said he doesn’t want it presumed into a use before council has even discussed it.
The Rundown
Alex: An outside study says Roanoke’s planning department is in trouble. Staff presented it to council Tuesday. A prolonged leadership void, pay that pushed people out the door, a vacancy rate that hit thirty-six percent, software problems, and pending permits at a four-year high. Developers and contractors described the department as a gatekeeper and, in the report’s words, a culture of no. One staff member told the consultants, quote, we are busting at the seams and every day is an emergency room triage exercise. That’s the Roanoke Times and Cardinal News.
Morgan: Is any of that moving?
Alex: It is. Assistant City Manager Lavar Youmans told council the backlog dropped by a third over a single month, and waits went from five or six weeks down to one or two. The report has twenty-five recommendations. The first is filling the director job.
Morgan: Better news out of the same city. Preston Park Elementary opened Thursday in northeast Roanoke. Thirty-two classrooms, built for seven hundred students, with a library that looks out at the Blue Ridge. The building it replaces opened in 1952 and had gotten so tight that teachers were holding class in hallways.
It was Superintendent Verletta White’s seventh and final ribbon cutting, and here’s the detail I liked. The division buys a new pair of scissors for every school, and they stay with that school. This one was teal. That’s the Roanoke Times, WSLS and WDBJ7. It’s also the division’s last construction project for a while, a month after they cut a hundred forty-eight jobs.
Quickly, around the region. Franklin County is settled. Mike Meredith dropped his fight to keep his Boone District seat Wednesday, saying the legal process could run weeks before it even reached a judge. Friday, the board appointed Bonnie Law, a lifelong county resident, to serve until a special election in 2027.
In Bedford County, a demographer gave the school board four options for uneven school capacity. All four assume Stewartsville Elementary closes, as the board already voted, and each adds a second closure on top of it. Several hundred students would move either way, and town halls are coming. And Christiansburg tightened its rules on any future data center. No by-right use in town without conditions.
Alex: Busy week for boards.
Morgan: One more. There’s a farm in northwest Roanoke opening a grocery store. Lick Run Farm, in Washington Park. During tomato season, neighbors walk over and knock, because the heirlooms would go soft sitting in the unmanned stand out front. So a farmer has to stop working and come out of the field to make the sale.
Cameron Terry, who co-owns Garden Variety Harvests, told the Roanoke Times that what people actually want is to walk through a door, see a cashier, and have a conversation. So that’s what they built. It’s called Crop Shop, in the farmhouse on Tenth Street northwest, and it opened yesterday during the farm’s fifth annual OkraFest.
Alex: And that’s a bigger deal than a new store.
Morgan: It is. A Roanoke Times analysis back in March found most of the national grocery chains serving Roanoke sit on the edges of the city or outside it entirely. The neighborhoods with the least income have the fewest options.
Alex: Last one. A new report says this region needs about nine thousand more health care workers. Claude Moore Opportunities and George Mason’s Center for Health Workforce analyzed active job postings and came up with nine thousand fifteen across the New River Valley, Roanoke and Lynchburg. More than three thousand are registered nurses. The Roanoke Times had it Thursday.
The Week Ahead
Morgan: All right. The week ahead is quiet until Wednesday, and then it doesn’t stop.
Wednesday, Mill Mountain Theatre opens Oklahoma!, running through October fourth.
Thursday, Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, the Whose Line Is It Anyway pair, are at the Harvester in Rocky Mount, doors at seven. Straight talk on that one: seats start around eighty-one dollars, and it’s forty minutes down there.
Alex: Good to know before you click buy.
Morgan: Friday gives you two very different evenings. Radford University’s Tartan 5K is a twilight run on the greenway, starting at River’s Edge Park at ten past six. Thirty-five dollars. Or, free, over in Salem, Movies in the Park at Kiwanis Park. How to Train Your Dragon, gates at seven, movie at dusk, free popcorn.
One date to put down: early in-person voting for the November third election opens Friday. Your registrar has the details.
Alex: And the thing to know about Friday is the heat. Ninety-four degrees, with a chance of storms after two in the afternoon.
Morgan: For a six o’clock race, that’s worth planning around.
Saturday is the big one. Elmwood Park has the Henry Street Heritage Festival, thirty-fifth year, one in the afternoon until ten at night. The Harrison Museum of African American Culture puts it on. Henry Street was the center of Black business and music and community life in Roanoke before urban renewal came through, and the festival is part of how that’s carried forward. Our listing doesn’t have admission, so check before you go.
Alex: Saturday looks easier than Friday, weather wise. Eighty-nine and mostly sunny, slight chance of a shower in the afternoon.
Morgan: Which helps, because most of Saturday is outside. Salem Football Stadium has the Blue Ridge Fall Music Games, hosted by the Pride of Salem marching band. More than twenty high school bands from around the state. Ten dollars for adults, five for kids.
And up the mountain, it’s International Red Panda Day at Mill Mountain Zoo, ten to five. Crafts, keeper talks about Frank, their red panda, and a meet and greet with Amanda, the mascot version. Twelve dollars, ten for kids.
Alex: Then Saturday night is a pileup. It’s all at seven thirty. Virginia Tech is at Maryland on FOX or FS1, the first regular season meeting between those two since 2013. Virginia plays West Virginia at the same time, in Charlotte, on ACC Network.
Morgan: Also at seven thirty, Béla Fleck brings My Bluegrass Heart to the Moss Arts Center in Blacksburg.
Alex: Naturally.
Morgan: And Opera Roanoke opens its fifty-first season with Verdi’s La Traviata at the Jefferson Center. That one’s a matinee. Two thirty, Saturday and Sunday both.
Alex: So the opera is the only thing not fighting anything else.
Morgan: The opera is the only thing not fighting anything else. Last thing, and it’s my favorite part of the week. Fall festival season starts Saturday, three farms at once. Sinkland Farms in Christiansburg opens its thirty-fifth Pumpkin Festival. Layman Family Farms in Blue Ridge opens its fall festival, and that’s the closest to town. And Beaver Dam Farm in Buchanan has sunflowers both days, with the Field of Heroes still standing. Four hundred six flags, one for every first responder who died on 9/11.
The Closer: The Galyen Bowl
Alex: One more before we go.
The marching bands at Northside and Hidden Valley don’t have much in common. Different music, different uniforms, different mascots, opposite ends of Roanoke County. But once a year, when the two schools play each other, both bands call the game the same thing. The Galyen Bowl.
Tim Galyen directs the band at Northside. His younger brother Thomas directs the band at Hidden Valley. WDBJ7 talked to both of them.
Same alma mater, same job, same reason for it. They followed their oldest brother, who is also a band director, and both majored in music at Virginia Tech.
People keep asking Thomas whether his brother is his rival. He says it’s really not like that.
And what Tim keeps coming back to isn’t the rivalry at all. The bands run like families, arguments included. And a kid walks into school on the first day already belonging to a group. The Northside kids and the Hidden Valley kids both get to feel that.
Morgan: Two brothers, two sides of the county, same idea. That’s a good one to end on.
Close
Alex: That’s The Roanoke Weekly. Thanks for spending part of your day with us.
Morgan: If it was useful, pass it to somebody else who lives here. That’s how people find us.
Alex: We’ll see you next Monday.