Foundation Lauds Preservation Efforts
By Rob Johnson rob.johnson@roanoke.com 981-3234
Several building renovations, redevelopment projects and the setting aside of land for recreation received awards from the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation on Tuesday.
The recognitions ranged from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Bridge in Roanoke to the protection of Carvins Cove by designating a large portion of its watershed as a conservation easement.
The Roanoke Valley awards come as a statewide historic preservation foundation has included the community of Elliston in Montgomery County and Roanoke’s Mill Mountain on its annual list of most-endangered sites in Virginia.
The Roanoke Valley group annually recognizes structural rehabilitation and environmental stewardship. The foundation named 11 winners, including three individuals who it said have raised public awareness of preservation projects.
Kudos went to the King bridge. According to the foundation, “The former Henry Street Bridge, a steel truss structure built by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1891, was rehabilitated and given an adaptive reuse as a walkway and a memorial plaza with a statue” of the civil rights leader.
Of Carvins Cove, the group said the Roanoke City Council voted unanimously to grant on 6,185 acres “the largest conservation easement in the state for all time, to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the Western Virginia Land Trust.”
Other winners included renovations and restorations of the Hancock Building on Campbell Avenue, with the help of a controversial $880,000 loan from the city, and the original brick shell of the Lincoln/Strand Theatre at the corner of Henry Street and Centre Avenue Northwest, converted into the Culinary Institute at Virginia Western.
Also recognized: the exterior renovation of the Hartsook Building on Market Street in downtown Roanoke, the Vinton War Memorial rehabilitation, the conversion of the old Fulton Motor Co. on Salem Avenue Southwest into residential lofts, and the “new life” brought to the 1826 vintage Ammen House in Fincastle.
The foundation recognized Joel Richert, a preservation activist in Roanoke’s Old Southwest neighborhood; Kent Chrisman, former executive director of the Historical Society of Western Virginia; and Rand Dotson, a Salem native who has written a new history of Roanoke’s early years.
The foundation also issued one barb in the form of its Bulldozer Award, citing Maple Leaf Farms LLC for demolishing the 1879 Charles Deyerle House last year to make room for a subdivision of upscale homes on Grandin Road Extension in Southwest Roanoke.
Last week, meanwhile, the Richmond-based APVA Preservation Virginia listed the sites of two controversial development proposals on its yearly roll call of “Endangered Historic Sites”: Mill Mountain, where a group has proposed building a restaurant/ community center, and the village of Elliston in Montgomery County, where Norfolk Southern Corp. wants to build an intermodal rail shipping facility.
“Mill Mountain is one of the few mountains located within a city,” the nomination stated, adding that restaurant opponents say it would require the removal of trees and “bring a commercial flavor” to the city park atop the mountain.
Montgomery County officials and many residents in the affected communities oppose the huge railyard’s prospective location.
The Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation issues its own list of “most-endangered” sites in the fall.
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