[Roanoke development]

The blurb said the design is now 80% complete. I'd wish we could get a sneak peek to see what this building will look like! Additionally, folks may be interested that they are finally doing significant prep work for the new hotel. Heavy machinery doing lots of digging and pushing of dirt around! Reserve Avenue wil be so completely transformed from the urban brownfield it used to be in just a couple years.

As I understand it, the grain milling company is finishing up it's new (massive) milling facility, and once they move operations from the Carilion location, they'll level that facility to make room for more of the biomedical facilities development. Exciting stuff!

Sean

[Roanoke development]

The firm has 46 lawyers plus staff and has been adding staff over the past year. I don't know how much space a firm of that size would need, but it seems like two floors would be a lot, given the relatively large footprint of the building. Its hard for me to imagine them needing the entire building.

46 lawyers + 46 paralegals + administrative staff = 120+ employees at a minimum. Assume 300 square feet of office space for each employee (this is a law firm, not a cubicle grid) and they would need 30,000 square feet. Then you need storage for all of the documents that 92 lawyers and paralegals create every day, which is beyond significant. That might be another 30,000 square feet. So at 60,000 square feet you're now 60% of the size of a typical WalMart. I'm sure there would be room for substantial leased space, but a law firm that big needs some serious square footage.

Sean

[Roanoke development]

The Mill Mountain Star will not be illuminated while renovations take place.

roanoke times

I wonder if anyone else agrees with me that midnight is too early to extinguish the star each night. In late June that means it is only on for about 3 hours. I think it should kept on until 3 am, at least during the summer. And 11 is too early to close access to the star. It should be open at least until midnight.

I think it should be on at sunset and remain on until sunrise. It's a great landmark. Actual stars (well, besides our sun) appear after sunset and remain visible until the sun rises, no? The city council needs to lighten up At a minimum, it should trigger on at sunset and remain on for eight hours.

Sean

[Roanoke development]

I would opt for residential housing, especially upscale housing - withiin city limits. The city itself has a glut of lower value residential properties, and most (all?) new upscale developments are slotted for Roanoke County. Those houses would sell. We can argue all day about whether or not Roanoke City has quality schools or not. I'm not an expert on Roanoke or it's schools. But if Roanoke City follows other City/County school dynamics, the City schools have a MUCH MUCH larger share of children living in or very close to poverty conditions. And those kids have different and more complicated challenges. And they pull down educational "scores" that our governments in their infinite wisdom apply to our schools. I think if we had a combined socio-economic dataset we'd see that children going to City schools perform generally as well as kids in the County schools provided you are comparing children in similar socio-economic conditions. Anyway, I think a housing development would be an ideal way to appeal to thirty and fortysomethings who have kids, have cash and want to be close to the action.

Sean

[New Roanoke Forumers]

Hi folks, just stumbled over this forum and signed on. I'm in Boones Mill, but of course we spend alot of time and dollars in Roanoke so I'm happy to have found this community.

Cheers,

Sean