Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9410030019
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Tech is already a partner in the hotel renaissance. Will it add the old printing company to its repertoire? It might.
Eighteen months after the buiding was sold at auction for just over $400,000, the city of Roanoke has set aside $550,000 for its purchase. All they need is a tenant willing to renovate.
"We've had discussions" with Tech, City Manager Bob Herbert said. "We've had discussions with other potential users - non-profits which would be compatible with the surrounding use."
Tech's Executive Vice President Minnis Ridenour casts the talks as preliminary, and only one of several options being mulled as the school weighs how to house its Roanoke-based initiatives.
Among those are the new and improved Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center, due to open in April. The school will run the related Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement, funded from '94 to '96 at $1.2 million and expected to become a corporate training center and thinktank.
There's also the Roanoke Valley Graduate Center, where angling for elbow room has become the norm, and WVTF, Tech's public radio station.
"I keep being told by our people in Roanoke we're going to have to have additional space," Ridenour said. "And as we get into the Hotel Roanoke more and more, there may be more space needs not accommodated."
If Tech moved into Stone Printing, the set-up might well create the closest thing to a satellite campus that Roanoke is likely to see.
\ It's been several years since work to forge a closer Roanoke-Virginia Tech link began. Widely seen as chief welder is the late Jim McComas, Tech's former president.
He viewed Roanoke as Tech's metropolitan front door. Economic-development disciples repeat the initiatives launched under his watch like a mantra: Hotel Roanoke, the "smart road," the New Century Council.
A year ago, illness forced McComas to resign. He was replaced by Paul Torgersen, the long-time dean of Tech's engineering school, who came to the job with close ties to the legislators in Richmond and the deal-makers in Roanoke.
Will Torgersen continue to hone the Roanoke-Tech connection? Or will he hold to the status quo so high-profile projects like the hotel can get established?
"Paul is a very practical-minded administrator with keen insight into the mutual benefits - and I emphasize, the mutual benefits - of Virginia Tech and Roanoke," Warner Dalhouse, chairman of First Union Bank Corp. of Virginia.
For his part, Torgersen's penchant for practicality seems to be asserting itself. Two events last month illustrate his position.
Former Gov. Gerald Baliles proposed that the I-81 corridor market itself as an education corridor. On nearly the same day, Gov. George Allen sent out a directive to colleges and universities: Prepare for the sixth wave of budget cuts since 1990.
But this year, the schools can't raise tuition any higher than the rate of inflation to make up the fiscal slack.
Does a college president risk spreading his school too thin?
"These are not times to make promises for the new things," Torgersen said.
As Torgersen sees it, the university already has a full agenda.
"I think you have to start with this premise: Our first obligation is here in Blacksburg, to the undergraduate student receiving a degree. Then that commitment begins to extend outward. It embraces research, and some existing commitments to agriculture across the commonwealth, and [to Tech-administered] extension offices. To our [Leesburg-based] Equine Medical Center.
"I just worry about the institution extending itself further than it should on all the things we do," Torgersen said.
Roanoke-based economic boosters see what Tech has done, and it is good.
Surveying the scene, Roanoke Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum said, "I see a lot happening between the Roanoke Valley and educational institutions to our immediate west."
Even with the change of Tech administration, "I don't find any indication there's any less interest in strengthening ties," Len Boone, owner of Boone & Co., said.
At the moment, the hotel may be the most visible sign of progress in the partnership. From his office at Tech's Burruss Hall, Buffer is trying to hire staff to help him launch the program. Visiting professors from the Blacksburg campus will augment the full-time COTA professors as "scholars in residence." To his national advisory board, Buffer just added Stephen Covey, known as the author of the mega-selling "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change."
A group of Tech professors is trying to figure out now how to launch programs in such areas as tourism and biotechnology.
While the academics are at work, others are booking groups and events into the hotel, and lobbying for the various amenities that will help make the hotel the jewel in Roanoke's downtown tourist effort.
But it's not enough to support an economy. The hotel, said Roanoke investment banker John Clarke, "is a one-shot situation."
"That's different than economic development. Here was one day a great idea and a facility dumped in the laps of the city of Roanoke and Virginia Tech. It's sort of like going back [when] Virginia Tech had the opportunity to host the Metro Conference Basketball Tournament. They were going to pass. They didn't have the facilities in Blacksburg." Roanoke ended up sponsoring the event.
While the hotel planners figure out how to draw conferees - reservations reportedly are already coming in - the smart road seems to be seen as the seed to grow an industry.
"I think anything we can do to evolve the smart highway needs to be done, and I think Tech is pursuing that," Boone said. "That would be the single most important step we could take."
To that end, former Virginia Transportation Commissioner Ray Pethtel has come on Tech's payroll. Like Buffer, Pethtel was approached with the idea of his position during the McComas era. With Allen's election, Pethtel decided to take the Blacksburg offer, and became Tech's transportation fellow.
Besides the government consortium - which looks at what Pethtel calls the "Buck Rogers apsects" of the engineering - there are other technology-development opportunities. Outgrowth companies might end up figuring out how to come up with safety systems.
"We're looking on a proposal now to make bridges self-monitoring," he said.
Clarke, a Tech alumnus, is skeptical about the road. He says he doesn't see it being built in his lifetime.
"If you had the money to do it, it would be fine. But I go to Southwest Virginia and Montgomery County all the time. I don't have much problem jumping on I-81."
Then, there's the New Century Council. Tech administrator Darrel Martin, a member of the council's steering committee, says stay tuned 'til next spring, when the council recommendations are issued.
"The real test is in the action," he said.
"I'm encouraged. I think there's a sense that now some very positive things can come out of it. People are getting excited about some of the ideas that are coming up. People say, 'Why hadn't that been thought about before?'" Clarke said.
There may be more ideas to come: Tech professors consulting Roanoke businesses, conferees from outside the area coming to the hotel and associating Roanoke and Tech.
That may or may not go over in the New River Valley, where an undercurrent of territorial resentment has been recognized by observers.
"To a certain extent, it may be true of the past," Woodrum said.
But, at least from the council's point of view, the work it's undertaken is genuine, he said.
Meanwhile, back at Tech, a wave of undergraduates is expected in a scant few years. Budgets may be cut. A reorganization to make the two meet is under way.
The New Century Council should come up with its set of recommendations by spring. The hotel will open this spring. The smart road may know if it's federally funded by spring.
What else can anyone expect from a four-year research university?
by CNB