Carvins Cove Hits a 2002 Low, Hotel Roanoke's Conference Center Sells, and Peepers Goes Home

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: It’s been a dry fall. This was the week a lot of people around the region started saying so out loud.

Morgan: And the same weather that’s causing the problem is about to hand us a really nice weekend. So, mixed feelings.

Alex: Let’s get into it.

The Lead: The Drought Goes Regional

Alex: Last week we mentioned Spring Hollow Reservoir was sitting around sixty-nine percent, and the water authority was asking people to conserve. This week the picture got wider, and a little more historic.

Carvins Cove, the reservoir up in southern Botetourt that supplies a big share of the Roanoke Valley, has dropped to almost twenty-one feet below full. Cardinal News reported that’s the lowest it’s been since December of 2002.

And it’s not just us. Bedford Water expanded a conservation request it had made to its Smith Mountain Lake customers this summer, and now it covers the whole county. They’re hoping everyone cuts back five to ten percent. In Rocky Mount, the Blackwater River dropped far enough to trip the town’s drought plan. The Roanoke Times reported residents there are now asked to hold off on watering lawns, washing cars and filling pools. Both say the supply is safe right now. The point is to keep it that way.

Morgan: Amherst is further along. They’ve gone past mandatory restrictions into emergency provisions. The town manager, Sara McGuffin, told WDBJ the river’s so low they have to shut the treatment plant off several times a day just to clear leaves out of the intake.

Alex: That’s a hard way to run a water system.

Morgan: One more piece, since it came up last week. That data center proposal at Wood Haven would draw from Spring Hollow. Mayor Joe Cobb told WDBJ this week why he’s backing it. The city owns forty-four percent of the park, and he said Roanoke can’t afford to slam the door on new business. He also said he’s open to reconsidering if the study phase turns something up.

Alex: Now, there is a hopeful thread here, and it’s the 2002 comparison. That fall was worse. Almost all of Virginia was in severe to exceptional drought. Then a strong El Niño kicked in, and by the first week of January the entire state was drought-free. Carvins Cove was full again a couple of months later. Cardinal’s weather writer, Kevin Myatt, points out it didn’t take floods. Just steady, regular rain, week after week.

This year’s El Niño is, by some measures, already stronger than that one. And early October, it turns out, is often when droughts peak, at least by reservoir levels, partly because once the leaves fall, more rain runs off into the streams instead of getting soaked up.

Morgan: So, about this week?

Alex: Sunny and dry through Saturday. The first real chance of rain is Sunday. Which brings us to everything else.

The Rundown

Alex: The Hotel Roanoke Conference Center has officially been sold. The commission that’s run it since the early nineties, made up of city and Virginia Tech representatives, voted this week to sell it to the Virginia Tech Foundation for fourteen million dollars, and all of that goes to the city.

The Foundation already owned the hotel itself. It announced a year ago it wants to sell, and now it can market the whole property as one piece. The commission’s chair, Court Rosen, told reporters he doesn’t expect a buyer to change much. His reasoning, roughly: anyone who pays what that hotel is worth is going to keep it a marquee hotel.

Morgan: And the city hasn’t decided what to do with fourteen million dollars?

Alex: Not yet. Cobb said the city has historic assets that need upgrading. For context, WDBJ noted the city is also looking at about a thirty million dollar bill to modernize the Berglund Center.

Morgan: Okay, Evans Spring. If you’re not from Northwest Roanoke, it’s about a hundred fifty acres of woods, wetlands and streams right across 581 from Valley View Mall. One of the biggest undeveloped pieces of land left in the city, and people have argued about it for years. It’s in a predominantly Black neighborhood that still remembers urban renewal, and two development plans have already ended up on a shelf.

Now there’s a third, and it works differently. Cardinal News reported the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy got a fifty thousand dollar grant to build a plan around what residents want, working with Hill Studio, the firm that worked on the Elmwood Park amphitheater. Meanwhile a national nonprofit, The Conservation Fund, is negotiating to buy the land from its four owners. Ideas so far include a nature park with boardwalks, and maybe a little affordable housing.

Stephen Niamke, who founded Friends of Evans Spring, told Cardinal he doesn’t think of this as the third plan. He thinks of it as the first, because it’s the first one that starts with the neighbors.

Alex: And the trees matter there. The city’s lost more than twenty percent of its tree canopy in the last ten years, and on the city’s heat map, Northwest Roanoke is one of the hottest spots.

Morgan: Two business notes. Parkway Brewing, the Salem brewery, cut the ribbon Thursday on a new downtown location on Campbell Avenue. WSLS reported this one has a full kitchen, which is new for them, and the managers said they’re going after a younger crowd.

And in Vinton, there’s finally a plan for that corner on East Lee Avenue that burned in 2022. The town bought the lot and the parcels next to it, and The Roanoke Times reported it’s now taking proposals for either a three-story boutique hotel, or housing with a business on the ground floor. A rooftop is on the wish list. Proposals are due November twentieth.

Alex: That’s right in the middle of downtown Vinton, which comes up again Saturday.

HCA is planning a new standalone emergency room in the Hollins area, on Williamson Road across from Northwest Ace Hardware. Cardinal News reported it’ll be LewisGale’s third freestanding ER, after Tanglewood and Bonsack, with about thirty jobs. It’s expected to open in 2028.

Last one. Friday night at a sold-out Lane Stadium, Virginia Tech trailed Pitt thirty-five to thirty-three, and drove into position for a thirty-six yard field goal with no time left. John Love, who’d made forty-two of forty-four from inside forty in his career, kicked it high over the left upright. The students thought it was good. Love thought it was good. The official called it wide. And because it sailed above the top of the upright, under NCAA rules, it couldn’t be reviewed.

Morgan: Oof. Four and oh, and that’s how it ends.

Alex: Four and one now. UVa had a rougher day, losing thirty-eight to seven at Florida State.

The Week Ahead

Morgan: Okay, the week ahead. And for once the weather is not a factor. Sunny and dry all week, up around eighty in the middle, and it holds through Saturday.

Wednesday, Weird Al Yankovic is back at the Salem Civic Center at seven-thirty, on the Bigger and Weirder tour. His band plus four extra players, so it’s a full production.

Alex: Still the best-selling comedy recording artist ever. That’s a real title.

Morgan: Thursday has two very different nights. At the Berglund Center, it’s Behind the Scream, a thirtieth anniversary screening of Scream, followed by a live conversation and Q and A with David Arquette, who played Dewey. That’s at seven. Or at The Exchange Music Hall on South Jefferson, Maggie Rose, the Nashville singer, also at seven. General admission is thirty dollars.

Friday, the Jefferson Center turns into a dance floor. Jstop Latin Soul is a Roanoke-based Afro-Cuban jazz band, salsa, rumba, cha-cha, and they’re playing a Latin dance party from eight to ten. Twenty dollars, and seating is limited on purpose.

Alex: Then Saturday, which is a lot.

Morgan: It really is. It starts early in Salem with the LewisGale Salem Half Marathon, plus an eight K and a kids fun run, starting and finishing at the Salem Farmers Market at eight. The course goes past Roanoke College and along the greenway, so if you’re driving through Salem that morning, plan around it.

The Vinton Fall Festival is ten to four downtown, free, with music, food and vendors. And the Egyptian Food Festival is at St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church on Crest Hill Drive, Saturday and Sunday, eleven to eight, free to get in.

Alex: Football Saturday too. Virginia Tech is at Cal at three-thirty, out on the West Coast. UVa hosts Syracuse at seven-thirty. If you’d rather watch one in person, Roanoke College hosts Hampden-Sydney at Salem Stadium at two.

Morgan: Saturday night, the Taubman opens a big new exhibition called American Made, paintings and sculpture across two centuries, with a party from seven to eleven themed on the decades. They’re calling it a Glowback Party. And out at Smith Mountain Lake, Michael Franti plays the Coves Amphitheater. Gates at five, fifty dollars in advance.

Sunday’s the soft landing, with a chance of showers. The Crystal Spring Block Party is at The River and Rail at three, with The Red Ferns, food from Yard Bull Meats and Crystal Spring Grocery, and bike games for the little kids. Seven dollars in advance, ten at the door. And Sunday night at the Jefferson Center, John Pizzarelli and Catherine Russell do a jazz tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson, at seven.

Alex: So Weird Al on Wednesday and Ella Fitzgerald on Sunday. That’s a range.

The Closer: Peepers Goes Home

Alex: One more before we go. For a month, WSLS ran its Clear the Shelters campaign with twelve shelters and rescues around the region. This week they added it up. Nine hundred fifty-six adoptions in one month. Six hundred fifty-one cats, two hundred ninety-seven dogs, and eight that were, let’s say, other.

The Roanoke Valley SPCA adopted out twenty animals in a single day, with a line outside the door. And at Angels of Assisi, the cat who’d been there longest, named Peepers, finally went home. After three hundred sixteen days.

Someone at Roanoke’s Regional Center for Animal Care and Protection made a point worth passing along. Every adoption from a rescue frees up a spot for an animal coming out of the municipal shelter. So it adds up past nine fifty-six.

Morgan: Three hundred sixteen days. Somebody walked in and said, that one. Good for Peepers.

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.