Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992 TAG: 9202100136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
OFFICES ATOP PARKING GARAGE PLANNED
A five-story parking garage topped by two floors of offices will be built behind the Crystal Tower Building if Cabell Brand and Ted Edlich have their way.Brand, chairman, and Edlich, executive director of Total Action Against Poverty, are looking for more parking space for employees of TAP and the other 42 tenants of Crystal Tower. TAP is using about 40 percent of the building.
Plans for a parking garage are being made as the last traces of residential rooms in the old hotel are being removed for offices.
A below-market loan for a $3 million garage with 450 parking spaces is a possibility if commercial tenants can be found for the top floors, Brand said.
Office rent could pay for the loan, he said. Brand and Edlich have been talking with insurance companies and foundations about low-cost financing for a public agency.
"We were led to believe there is a strong possibility of a favorable loan to build a parking garage if it's economically viable," Brand said. The project will be viable if tenants can be found for about 15,000 square feet of space on the top floor, he said. One floor makes it work, and two floors of offices would be better, he added.
The garage "is on hold until we find a tenant. . . . Ten dollars a square foot is pretty cheap space, including parking," he said.
A garage with space on the sixth and seventh floors "makes sense" for the site at Salem Avenue and Second Street, according to a study by Wayne Dillon, president of Days Construction Co. in Roanoke County.
The parking garage idea will be enhanced by the city's planned Second Street bridge across the Norfolk Southern tracks, Dillon and Brand said. The Second Street bridge will make that street a major entrance to downtown Roanoke, since the Hunter Viaduct was closed to make room for Dominion Tower.
In May, the Virginia Water Project moves into the Crystal Tower's eighth floor and Head Start offices take over the seventh floor, Brand said. For the first time since the old TAP building burned in December 1989, the headquarters for all TAP agencies, except its food bank, will be under one roof.
Both the water project and Head Start have spun off from TAP sponsorship, but they joined the anti-poverty agency in buying the Crystal Tower in 1990.
The water project, headed by Wilma Warren, who is retiring, will bring a staff of 17 when the remodeling is completed. This office assists community water projects from Delaware to Florida.
Head Start, led by Cleo Sims, has 19 employees who will move downtown from Shenandoah Avenue Northwest. Her program is for children of working mothers in the Roanoke Valley, and Botetourt, Craig, Rockbridge and Alleghany counties.