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Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Second-year piano student Angela Vu, 9, concentrates on a piano piece while teacher Margo Easter, artistic director of the Performing Arts Institute of Virginia, observes her at Blacksburg Christian Church. The Performing Arts Institute of Virginia moved out of the old Blacksburg Middle School building and into the church on Watson Street, across from Gilbert Linkous Elementary School.

Where they went

Groups that used the old Blacksburg Middle School have moved some or all their events to the following locations:

• Blacksburg Old time Music and Dance Group: Gilbert Linkous Elementary School, 813 Toms Creek Road, Blacksburg
• Performing Arts Institute of Virginia: Blacksburg Christian Church, 240 Watson St., Blacksburg
• Renaissance Music Academy: Blacksburg Middle School, 3109 Prices Fork Road, Blacksburg
• St. John Neumann Academy: 75 Patricia Lane, Christiansburg
• Two Dog Waltz: Still looking
• YMCA at Virginia Tech: Renovating its new headquarters at 1000 N. Main St., Blacksburg, and still seeking locations for some classes

BLACKSBURG -- When Margo Easter learned she would have to move her music school from the old Blacksburg Middle School, she said it sent her into kind of a panic.

Now she is much more at ease, having relocated the Performing Arts Institute of Virginia to Blacksburg Christian Church on Watson Street.

The church has ample parking and plenty of room for group or individual lessons. The rent hasn't required the school to raise fees to its more than 200 students.

"I couldn't ask for anything more," Easter said.

But not all of the nonprofit groups that relied on the former middle school can say the same.

Two dance organizations are still looking for space with a wooden floor. The YMCA at Virginia Tech, which had 28 classes in the former middle school earlier this year, has had to put some courses on hold for lack of space, though that situation should improve when it finishes renovating its North Main Street headquarters next year in the old Wade's Supermarket building.

The exodus of arts organizations from Blacksburg Middle School, which is nearly complete, appears to have created a space crunch for some in Blacksburg's vibrant cultural scene.

Leslie Hager-Smith, YMCA director of community programs, said the old school offered large classrooms, some with counters and sinks, which are tough to find elsewhere but necessary for water-dependent courses such as chair caning, spoon carving and cooking.

"Comparable space is not available to me now," Hager-Smith said. "I am going to have to scramble, and I am vying with all these other lovely nonprofit organizations, whom I wish well. Formerly we were all partners in one location. Now we are competing in the open [rental] market, which is a bummer."

Hager-Smith said that when she talks to other groups that were in the middle school, "they're cordial, they nod and say, 'The move is going OK.' They say, 'I think I have space.' But they don't tell you where."

After it stopped being a middle school in 2002, the mid-1950s building along South Main Street became a center of community activity, hosting everything from adult literacy courses to square dances. Last spring, the Montgomery County school division told its tenants it was likely they would need to relocate. Confirmation came in July.

The ultimate fate of the building remains unclear, but the plan is for the county to sell it and use the proceeds for school construction or upkeep.

A key step in that process came Tuesday, when Blacksburg Town Council voted 4-3 to approve a special use permit for a new high school stadium off Prices Fork Road. That allows officials to package the middle school and the stadium at the old middle school site that the high school now uses.

The county supervisors and town council have appointed a joint task force to make recommendations for redeveloping the site, which sits on 20 acres of prime downtown real estate. Officials from both governments said all sorts of uses will be considered.

"Personally, I would like to see something that's an activity generator for downtown and complements downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods," said Marc Verniel, town manager. "That could range from a park to a mixed use development with open space, housing, offices or commercial. Where it falls between those two extremes, I don't know."

One thing is certain. The main portion of the middle school will not be heated this winter, which school officials estimate will save $116,000. The school system has moved its adult programs into a smaller building on the middle school grounds, which will be heated. Nonprofit groups were given until Nov. 1 to leave the larger building. Many are already gone.

The Two Dog Waltz organization has its last dance in the middle school scheduled for Wednesday.

"It's the last dance in the middle school, but not the last dance," said Mark Lattanzi of Two Dog Waltz, who is still looking for a wooden-floored venue.

Another organization, the Blacksburg Old Time Music and Dance Group, has moved its events to Gilbert Linkous Elementary School.

"Dancers like the old middle school because it's wood. It's a much better floor to dance on than that tile floor which is in Gilbert Linkous," said Scott Nelson, lead organizer for the group.

He said attendance was down for the first dance at Linkous, but attributed that to Virginia Tech students' being on break, not the change in floor type.

In contrast to some groups that are still figuring out how to make do without the old middle school, St. John Neumann Academy, a Roman Catholic school for grades pre-K to eight, is settled in its new home in Christiansburg.

"We didn't have a huge pullout, and have new families enrolled from Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Radford," said school Director Julia Wharton.

Teresa Ehrlich, board secretary for the Renaissance Music Academy, said her group has always used multiple locations for its classes and has shifted some of the ones it had in the old middle school to Blacksburg's new middle school on Prices Fork Road.

"Nobody likes to move," but groups that were in the old middle school were always aware that "the future of that building was in question" Ehrlich said.