Photos by Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

The Roanoke Farmers Market is a fixture of downtown, an area that is a hot topic as city elections draw near.

Roanoke has requested proposals to renovate, maintain and manage the three-story City Market Building, which houses a food court among other things.

Most of the Roanoke council and mayoral candidates agree that renovation of the City Market Building is important to the downtown area.

Downtown Roanoke serves as a second neighborhood for many of the city's residents.

They may live in other parts of the city, but they work, eat out and attend festivals downtown. Downtown serves as a focal point for city activities -- and it's therefore a focal point for the 10 candidates running for mayor and three seats on the city council.

At forums and in conversations, the candidates have discussed a number of downtown issues, including the state of the City Market Building, fees to park in the city's garages, proposed renovations by Center in the Square, residential development and how to attract more businesses.

"I think we've got some good momentum with downtown, I believe, and we've certainly got some things that over the next 12 to 18 months are going to happen downtown, whether it's the art museum or trolley service or opening a new parking garage," said incumbent Mayor Nelson Harris, who is running as the Democratic nominee for re-election. "But we've got some challenges that are difficult and are going to take some time and some work."

City Market Building

In March, the city requested proposals to renovate, maintain and manage the three-story City Market Building. The deadline is June 2.

"I think that's probably in my mind, in terms of downtown issues, our number one priority," Harris said.

Most of the other candidates agree that renovation of the City Market Building is important to downtown Roanoke.

"It definitely needs refurbishing," said Valerie Garner, an independent council candidate.

Democratic council candidates Sherman Lea, Anita Price and Court Rosen, as well as independent council candidate Brian Wishneff, agreed the market building is a high priority and that the city is moving in the right direction with its request.

Economic development

Candidates differ on what to do to help fill empty storefronts and offices in downtown Roanoke.

Independent mayoral candidate George Sgouros thinks that too many businesses have located in corporate parks around Roanoke's periphery.

"I would first start by bringing the businesses downtown," Sgouros said. "I'd offer rental incentives to fill up those buildings. I'm sure it costs a lot more to rent space in the corporate park."

Independent mayoral candidate David Bowers took a different tack.

"My first thought is the downtown should be the focus of the government," Bowers said. "Whether it's local, state or federal, we should work very hard to keep those offices in downtown."

Wishneff, who has kept his campaign loosely affiliated with Bowers', has criticized the city administration for working with the federal government to place its regional Social Security Administration office next to the library on Jefferson Street. Wishneff thinks that site should instead be used for a multistory office building. And he believes the city should focus its economic development efforts squarely on the former Heironimus building. The city should take out a 30- to 40-year lease on the building, entice retailers with some sort of incentive, and then renovate the building to accommodate them, he said.

"I think if you could do something like that, the rest of the Jefferson Street would begin to take care of itself," Wishneff said.

Garner said the city doesn't even need to go quite that far, and instead can spur development by focusing on key projects such as the City Market Building and encouraging attractions such as Center in the Square and the Taubman Museum of Art.

"All those things will bring traffic downtown," Garner said. "The businesses will be more profitable, and that will spur other businesses to open. ... Entrepreneurship happens on its own."

But independent council candidate Dale Edmonston said he thinks the city should renovate some of the buildings.

Rosen suggested the city might offer incentives such as temporary free rent to help get small entrepreneurs started.

Independent mayoral candidate Anita Powell said she would like to see Center in the Square, Mill Mountain Theatre or the Dumas Center for Artistic & Cultural Development screen movies on a regular basis as a way to draw more people downtown.

Lea said he thinks that downtown could do better by reaching out to a broader swath of the community.

"A lot of times when I ride through there on Friday and Saturday nights, it doesn't seem like the entire community," Lea said. "I think all segments of our community should feel it's the thing to do to go downtown on Friday, Saturday, Sunday."

Center in the Square

Center in the Square, the cultural and museum hub of downtown, asked the city council earlier this month for $4 million to assist in its proposed $27 million makeover.

Sgouros is somewhat wary of sinking that much money into one venue.

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket," he said. "It's nice to fix up the Center in the Square, but it's not going to be an elaborate tourist draw."

But the rest of the field supports the proposal.

"I like that idea a lot," Garner said, but added she thinks the city should pay its share over four years and not all at once.

Lea said he's behind the center's proposal "all the way."

"Even though the budget is going to be tight, I would make that a priority," he said.

Downtown living

Most of the candidates agree that encouraging more people to move downtown will help Roanoke. But there's disagreement on the best way to do that.

Wishneff has assailed the council's decision to award an $880,000 performance grant to a downtown developer to build apartments in the former Grand Piano building. If the city had not awarded the grant, developers Ed Walker and Scott Graeff said they would have moved forward to build condominiums instead.

Although the city helped to fund the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority's renovation of Eight Jefferson Place, Wishneff argued that it was a bad precedent for the city to provide grants to private developers for downtown projects.

Parking

Last summer, the city council first voted to raise parking rates, then froze the increases while it reconsidered before eventually voting to pass a slightly scaled-back schedule of rate increases.

Price acknowledges the issue is a "touchy subject" but said she believes the city can find a compromise to fund construction of new parking facilities while not scaring potential patrons from downtown.

"Parking fees are a huge bone of contention, but in most big cities the bottom line is folks have to pay for parking," Price said.

Garner and Wishneff think the city should subsidize its parking fund with money from its general fund, even if that damages the city's ability to pay for other capital projects.

Wishneff also has backed the construction of a new parking garage next to the Hotel Roanoke in a space that currently is home to a 250-spot parking lot. The garage, he said, would house 600 spaces and an additional 100 spaces for the hotel.

"You'd have a garage that could be convenient to the new art museum and hopefully to a renovated market building, and obviously to serve the hotel to replace what's there," Wishneff said.

Elmwood Park

Candidates also named Elmwood Park as an important part of downtown. Several candidates have called for the city to abandon its consideration of the former Victory Stadium site for an outdoor amphitheater and instead place it downtown in the park.

"If we're able to get a change in the election here, I would redo Elmwood Park," Wishneff said. He would invest "$2 [million] or $3 million putting some permanent bathrooms and a canopy over the stage."

Harris said he'll also put "a pretty strong emphasis on creating Elmwood Park as a better amenity," focusing largely on the pavilion area.

The city library next to the park is another issue. Harris said the council will address its condition and evaluate two or three options for improving it, including renovation, rebuilding it on the existing site or moving it elsewhere.

Just across the street is the Patrick Henry Hotel, which Harris and Bowers both spoke about working to improve. Harris said the city has approached the owners about purchasing the building several times but has always been rebuffed.

"We would obviously love to see it restored and have some kind of use to it other than the way it's been languishing the past few years," Harris said.

Bowers has made renovation of the Patrick Henry Hotel one of his campaign planks.

"We ought not just ignore that until something happens," Bowers said. "We ought to have a very active task force or group dealing with the owners to see what we can do to rebuild that building as a motel or independent living project."