Wood Haven Confirmed, RMA Moves Into Black Dog, and a Choir on Stage With Foreigner

Full Transcript

Intro

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

Morgan: And I’m Morgan. This is your locally curated, AI-narrated look at the news and events around the Roanoke Valley, pulled from The Roanoke Times, Cardinal News, WDBJ7, and WSLS.

Alex: This one felt like moving day. A lot of things around the valley picked up and found a new home this week.

Morgan: And October shows up on Thursday, with a weekend that’s mostly outdoors and mostly free.

Alex: Let’s get into it.

The Lead: Wood Haven Gets Its Label

Alex: We’ll keep this one tighter, since it’s our third week on it. Two weeks ago a regional board voted behind closed doors to sell land at the Wood Haven Technology Park, off I-81. This week, it finally said what it’s for.

On Tuesday the authority confirmed the buyer, Clearview Dynamics, intends to build a data center there. Executive director John Hull said the governor’s recent order on data center secrecy pushed them to say so sooner. The Roanoke Times got the purchase agreement through a records request, and nearly every dollar figure in it is blacked out, except a five hundred thousand dollar deposit. The buyer now has until as late as next March to study the site, and the sale isn’t expected to close until October of 2027. No end user has signed on yet. Not Google, not Meta, nobody named.

And there’s a date in that agreement that doesn’t add up. WDBJ reported the two sides signed a nondisclosure agreement in March of 2024. Clearview Dynamics didn’t exist until January of this year. The authority now says the earlier agreement was with an affiliated company. It hasn’t said which one.

Morgan: The water part caught my attention. The authority says the site would draw from Spring Hollow Reservoir, and that Clearview would pay for all the water and power infrastructure. But The Roanoke Times reported Spring Hollow is sitting about twenty-six feet below full, around sixty-nine percent, and the water authority has asked everyone to conserve because of the drought. It also says nobody from Clearview has contacted it.

Alex: It’s also split Roanoke City Council. Mayor Joe Cobb said two colleagues broke council’s ethics code with their public statements against the deal. He didn’t name them, but those statements came from Vice Mayor Terry McGuire and Councilman Phazhon Nash. Cobb said they allowed, quote, “their activism to override their governance responsibilities.” That same night council voted six to one to create a professional standards committee, with McGuire the only no. McGuire told The Roanoke Times, quote, “I do not have remorse about my statement.”

Alex: Nothing gets decided this week. The next real marker is the end of that study period in the spring.

The Rundown

Alex: A new statewide hunger study, the first since the federal government stopped tracking state numbers last year, found about four in ten Virginia households struggled to reliably afford food over the past year. Southwest Virginia came in highest in the state, at fifty-five percent. Among families with kids here, it’s seventy percent.

The findings were discussed Friday at Feeding Southwest Virginia’s conference in Roanoke. WDBJ talked to the food bank’s CEO, Pamela Irvine, who’s retiring after forty-five years there. She said they’d known the region was hit hard, but, quote, “to see the fifty-five percent was a little overwhelming.” Her larger point, to WSLS, was that food banks aren’t supposed to be the first line of defense. SNAP is.

Morgan: And there’s an easy way to help this weekend. We’ll get to it.

Okay, on a lighter note, a moving story. Roanoke Mountain Adventures, the outdoor gear consignment shop and bike shop, closed its Wasena store at the end of August and reopened a few days later inside Black Dog Salvage, by Memorial Bridge. Owner Jeff Todd took ten thousand square feet of the salvage yard’s building and tripled his retail space. He told The Roanoke Times the old store was, quote, “claustrophobic, in a charming way.”

The best part is how they moved. No moving crew. Friends and customers rode about a hundred bikes the half mile over. And since then, the shop has had four of the five busiest days in its history.

Alex: That’s the same property as the Dog Bowl, which comes up again later.

Morgan: It does. Also new in town, and a lot bigger: Academy Sports and Outdoors opens its three hundred twenty-fourth store Friday, on Towne Square Boulevard. WSLS reported it brings at least sixty jobs. The night before, the store’s putting five thousand dollars into a shopping night with the Boys and Girls Club of Southwest Virginia. Twenty kids get two hundred dollars each to spend. Doors open Friday at seven-forty in the morning.

And two local colleges made news. Virginia Western formally inaugurated Laura Treanor Friday at the Jefferson Center, its fifth president and the first woman in the job, in the school’s sixtieth year. Her dad introduced her. He said she always played to win, and that she’s redefined winning as opening a door for somebody and helping them walk through it.

Meanwhile Roanoke College is ending its required May Term after this school year. The Roanoke Times reported the travel versions were the most popular, but at four to six thousand dollars a student, they priced some kids out. Travel courses stay, just not as a requirement.

Alex: That’s a real tradition to retire. Ask any Roanoke College grad about their May Term.

Last one, and it’s quick. The Virginia High School League voted thirty-three to nothing Wednesday to reject Patrick Henry’s final appeal, so starting in 2027, the Patriots move up to Class Six, the state’s biggest. PH was forty-seven students over the line. And that means the region shifts from William Fleming and Franklin County to Richmond and Tidewater schools. Travel was the whole reason for the appeal.

The Week Ahead

Morgan: So, the week ahead. It runs close to ninety on Thursday, which is October first, and then the weekend cools off.

Wednesday, the Grandin is showing Nosferatu, the 1922 silent vampire film, with a band called the Invincible Czars playing an original score live underneath it. Doors at six, about twenty-four dollars with the fee.

Thursday, the Salem Museum’s Ghost Walk opens for its twenty-eighth year, Thursday through Saturday, six to eight. Costumed ghosts from Salem history at East Hill Cemetery, tours every fifteen minutes, twelve dollars for adults, eight for students. Family-friendly, not scary.

Alex: Then Friday night. Virginia Tech hosts Pitt at Lane Stadium, seven o’clock on ESPN, and it’s sold out. The Hokies are four and oh after coming back to beat Boston College twenty-one to fourteen Saturday, in a nor’easter. That’s two straight road wins in James Franklin’s first year.

Morgan: A sold-out Friday night at Lane. That’ll be loud.

Back in Roanoke, First Fridays is downtown, five to nine, ten dollars, and the money goes to local nonprofits including RAM House. Rodney Atkins is at Dr Pepper Park.

And here’s that easy way to help. The Craftsmen’s Fall Classic runs Friday through Sunday at the Berglund Center, with hundreds of artisans, and admission and parking are free if you bring a food donation for Feeding Southwest Virginia.

Alex: Which lines up nicely with that hunger study.

Morgan: It does. Then Saturday, starting with the most Roanoke thing on the calendar. Old Southwest Porchfest, two to seven, free, in its second year. Twenty-one local acts playing from three front porches around the Day Avenue pocket park, plus food and vendors.

Downtown, Local Colors holds its seventh annual Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration, noon to four on John Nolen Plaza. Dance, live music, food from all over Latin America, also free. Elmwood Park has Fall Fest from four to ten-thirty, a hip-hop and pop show headlined by BossMan Dlow. The city calendar doesn’t list a price.

And Skydog, an Allman Brothers tribute, closes out the season at the Dog Bowl. Doors at five, twenty dollars in advance.

Alex: The same salvage yard RMA just moved into. And honestly you could walk most of Saturday. Porchfest, downtown, Elmwood, and the Dog Bowl are all within a couple of miles.

Morgan: One weather note for all of that: Saturday drops to about seventy-six with a chance of showers. Not a washout, but it’s there.

Alex: UVa’s at Florida State Saturday at three-thirty on ESPN2, coming off a forty-two to three win over Delaware.

Morgan: Sunday’s the soft landing. Music on the Mountain at the Mill Mountain Discovery Center, five to seven, with live music, a food truck, and crafts for kids. Or Margo Price at the Harvester in Rocky Mount that night.

The Closer: William Byrd’s Choir

Alex: One more before we go. Last week we mentioned Foreigner was playing the Salem Civic Center on Wednesday night. Part of that show came from Vinton.

For almost twenty years, wherever Foreigner tours, the band runs a contest for a local high school choir to join them on stage. This spring, the William Byrd High School choir sent in an audition tape, and they won.

Matt Bartley has directed that choir for sixteen years. WDBJ reported his students had never sung anywhere bigger than a school auditorium. One of them, a senior named Aubrey Blewett, has been in the choir all four years and is heading to college for music therapy.

Wednesday night, instead of leading them from the front of the room, Bartley planned to be out in the crowd. He told WDBJ, quote, “My favorite musicians are the ones that I teach.”

Morgan: Sixteen years of school auditoriums, and then an arena. That’s a good Wednesday.

Close

Alex: That’s the week. Thanks for listening to The Roanoke Weekly.

Morgan: If you know somebody in the valley who’d get something out of this, send it their way. That’s how it spreads.

Alex: We’ll see you next Monday.