Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 15, 1993                   TAG: 9308130159
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

COULD BUSINESSES, TECH HAVE COOPERATED BETTER?

When it arrived, however, it became just another lesson in frustration with Big Brother.

Small restaurants and boutiques in downtown Blacksburg expected they would see a surge in dollars as 10,000 affluent vacationers hit town.

Instead, many looked out on empty streets - bare of visitors and bare of hometown customers scared off by traffic rumors. Instead of profits, they saw only the increased costs of stocking food that wasn't eaten, merchandise that wasn't sold and staff that wasn't used.

For some, that dream may have been unrealistic from the start. Many of Blacksburg's downtown eateries and nightspots are student hangouts - hardly the type of place to attract gray-haired, affluent retirees.

Others, though, could have provided the specialty foods and small-town service that set such family-owned restaurants apart from larger, more homogenized food services.

I can't help but wonder if somehow Virginia Tech, the motor coach association and the others who planned the week couldn't have figured some way to cope with the crowds yet still incorporate the town's many small businesses - even the downtown itself - in this weeklong extravaganza.

Working with many small businesses has to be more time-consuming, probably more frustrating, than working with a large corporation with the dollars and staff to tackle huge ventures.

Sometimes downtown merchants can be their own worst enemies in marketing their products and services - but they also are enterprises that are stretched thin, operating on a shoestring with no spare time or staff for special projects or marketing.

They are also the soul of our downtown.

When I introduce anyone new to the area, I take them downtown to show off one of the few thriving and charming downtowns I know.

I also breathe a sigh of relief that it's not me coping with the stress and financial pressure of keeping one of the small businesses downtown afloat.

So I can understand the owners and employees must have felt an especially keen disappointment last week when the motor coaches packed up and headed out of town. The conventioneers did leave big dollars behind - but they were spent at the more upscale restaurants, at motels, service stations and on the Tech campus.

I don't mean to detract one bit from the truly remarkable feat of crowd- and traffic-engineering that took place. The coordination of traffic, exhibits and parking were done masterfully by university officials, Blacksburg's town government and police, and the state Highway Department. Not even my grumpiest friends have complained about traffic jams or throngs of tourists.

Virginia Tech also made available five concession spaces at its food courts to local restaurants or caterers.

Only four bothered to take advantage.

So an effort was made, and, perhaps, not fully accepted.

Some of the local restaurateurs may have thought that, rather than paying a fee of $1,000 each, they were better off concentrating on their own shops and feeding the crowds who would surely descend on their doorsteps.

No one could have expected the university to turn to a Souvlaki or a Pargo's to feed 10,000 visitors. Yet they might have been a part - a specialty part - of a mammoth food operation.

A few years ago, many of the longtime local restaurants and caterers had a chance to showcase their specialties at the Chamber of Commerce's annual banquet. The food was divine - a moveable feast of diverse courses from seafood pasta to walnut mushroom pate.

Is it unreasonable to think that some of these same businesses might not have similarly delighted - and profited from - our recent guests?

I can't help feeling regret that there wasn't more of a cooperative effort and a mutually beneficial partnership between Tech and the local merchants during this convention.

I can't help thinking that the visitors missed a real treat.

And that the university and the town missed a chance to become better friends.

Elizabeth Obenshain is editor of the New River Valley bureau of the Roanoke Times & World-News.