Two months ago, the head of the Roanoke Higher Education Center was optimistic about plans to renovate two blighted Gainsboro area buildings and establish a new culinary school for Western Virginia.

There was one expensive problem: The $2 million project had only about half the money needed to make it happen.

On Friday, that problem disappeared.

Higher Education Center Executive Director Tom McKeon said Friday that a Northern Virginia foundation with Roanoke ties has awarded a grant that puts the project on sure footing.

The Claude Moore Charitable Foundation of Fairfax has pledged two installments of $500,000 each for renovating the buildings on First Street, including restoration of the old Ebony Club and the one-story building beside it.

"This is the other million," McKeon said. "This will ensure that we'll be able to move ahead."

McKeon described the buildings as among the last blighted buildings in the area historically known as Henry Street.

"To bring them back to life, we think, will stimulate other projects along First Street and Henry Street," he said.

In 2003, the Higher Education Center revealed plans to create a Roanoke-based chef school operated by Virginia Intermont College in Bristol. The program would offer two years of study in the culinary arts. Students also would take two years of general education classes at Virginia Western Community College through a partnership created with the community college and Virginia Intermont.

It would hire Roanoke faculty for the school, including local chefs.

Mike Puglisi, vice president at Virginia Intermont, said the Moore grant secures a clear path for the cooking school, which is on schedule to open in the spring of 2006.

"We are very pleased to see the project going forward," he said. "Tom McKeon and the board have been working hard to raise the funds necessary for the renovation."

Renovation work at the two buildings would make room for teaching kitchens, classrooms and offices, a meeting hall and an area for catering and other special event use.

Tax credits supplied part of the Higher Education Center's first $1 million for the renovations. The Roanoke Redevelopment Housing Authority will donate the land and the buildings for the project once complete financing plans are in place, which will make up the other part of the first $1 million, McKeon said.

The Moore Foundation grant not only provides an educational opportunity, but also supports the renovation and redevelopment of Henry Street, said state Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, whose legislation made Virginia Intermont part of the Higher Education Center. The driving force behind the legislation was to let Virginia Intermont offer the culinary program in Roanoke through the auspices of the Higher Education Center.

The grant stretches beyond the classroom walls. It's a shot in the arm for the renovation and redevelopment of the historic Henry Street neighborhood, a once-thriving black community that ran into ruin in the 1960s, leaving the strip nearly abandoned for years.

"The grant will move the Henry Street renovation further along, and the renovations will bring Henry Street back to life," said Edwards, also chairman of the center's Board of Trustees. "We need the dollars; it's a tremendous gift to Roanoke."

One Gainsboro neighborhood activist said the renovations will provide an uplift.

"I think the grant is a wonderful accomplishment for higher education. We've been searching for the money for a while," said Evelyn Bethel, president of Historic Gainsboro Preservation District Inc.

A foundation representative could not be reached for comment Friday.

After months of pursuing money for the project, McKeon admitted he was growing concerned. Applications for grants from other foundations weren't approved.

Attracting the attention of the Moore Foundation was a stroke of luck.

After finishing a presentation about the Higher Education Center to an economic group in Loudoun County, a lawyer from the foundation who was in the audience approached McKeon. He explained that Moore, who died in 1991, grew up in Roanoke and had two sisters who lived all their lives here. The family wanted to invest in the city.

"He said, do you have anything in mind? I said yes," McKeon recalled. "Perfect timing."

Staff writers Lois Caliri

and McGregor McCance

contributed to this report.