Roanoke commission moves forward with plans for Hotel Roanoke sale

The Hotel Roanoke Conference Center Commission continues advancing plans to sell “The Grand Old Lady,” which first sheltered weary travelers back in 1882.

Today, the Virginia Tech Foundation owns the Hotel Roanoke, while Virginia Tech and the City of Roanoke jointly own the conference center through the commission. It was formed to build and operate the 63,000-square-foot conference space that was added on to the hotel as part of a multimillion-dollar revitalization effort in the 1990s.

At a commission meeting Wednesday, Kyle Laux, senior vice president of Richmond-based Davenport & Co., provided an outline of what’s involved in paying back about $12.7 million in bonds the city issued in May 2024 to pay for a 10,000-square-foot expansion of the Hotel Roanoke’s conference center if the property is sold.

“Virginia Tech has notified the city and the Hotel Roanoke Conference Center Commission … of its intent to sell the Hotel Roanoke,” according to a slide in the presentation. “Because the Hotel Roanoke and the conference center facilities are physically attached and constitute an integrated structure, the sale of the Hotel Roanoke may likely require, or effectively force, the sale of the conference center facilities.”

Virginia Tech did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. However, in October 2025, university spokesperson Mark Owczarski confirmed that the university and the Virginia Tech Foundation had approached Roanoke about exploring a sale of The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center.

Under Virginia law, a municipality can use sales tax generated by a qualifying public building to pay off bonds issued to pay construction, renovation or expansion costs related to the qualifying public building.

Roanoke had planned to use the tax rebates to pay the debt service on the bonds, Laux explained at the meeting. However, because plans for the conference center’s expansion were dropped in September 2025 after the commission decided to explore selling the property, Roanoke no longer qualifies to receive the hotel’s sales tax.

“The city will have to give those dollars back to the state,” Laux said.

On Wednesday, commissioners unanimously approved plans to transfer $339,720.75 from its reserve account to the City of Roanoke so that the municipality can pay that amount in a debt service due April 1 to the bondholders.

Since Roanoke’s latest bonds for the Hotel Roanoke were issued in 2024, Roanoke has paid about $950,000 in debt service payments.

Will the Star City get that money back when the hotel and conference center are sold?

“That’s the question that’s being worked through: How to best make the city whole,” Paul Beers, a principal at Glenn Feldmann Darby & Goodlatte who represents the commission, said Friday.

The discussion comes at a time when the City of Roanoke is working on its fiscal 2027 budget. Early in the process, the city had an $18.9 million gap due to costs outpacing revenue growth.

On Monday, Roanoke City Manager Valmarie Turner presented a proposed balanced budget of $421.5 million to City Council, which is an increase of 3.37% from fiscal 2026. Among the cost-cutting measures included in the proposed budget were cutting 29 positions and freezing between 80 and 95 more.

A great partnership

At Wednesday’s meeting, Laux explained the City of Roanoke has about $4.55 million in sales tax rebate funds from bonds issued for Hotel Roanoke projects that will need to be returned to the state.

“We have those dollars in hand as a city, so it goes right back to the state,” he said. “It’s a wash.”

After using some bond proceeds on design and planning for the conference center expansion, the city has about $12.2 million remaining, according to Wednesday’s presentation.

Laux explained that the amount of money Davenport & Co. estimates will be needed for escrow to pay off the bonds depends on the closing date and other factors. It could be between $19.6 million and $22.5 million, according to the presentation.

At a commission meeting held March 5, commissioners approved a resolution to award Newmark of Washington, D.C., a subsidiary of New York-based commercial real estate advisor and service provider Newmark Group, a one-year real estate brokerage contract “after finding that contractor the sole source practicably available to market and sell the Conference Center of Roanoke in close coordination with the efforts of the Virginia Tech Foundation Inc. to market and sell the Hotel Roanoke.”

The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center became a Hokie in 1989 after Norfolk Southern deeded the hotel to the university.

At that time, business wasn’t booming at the hotel. Tourists preferred chain hotels off the interstate, and Norfolk Southern decided to focus its energies on the transportation business.

Using loans, donations and other funding, leaders of a revitalization effort raised about $28 million initially to remodel the hotel, with an additional $13 million spent to construct the conference center before the property reopened to considerable fanfare in 1995.

Formerly a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel property, the Hotel Roanoke has operated under the Curio Collection by Hilton brand since 2016.

“The city and Virginia Tech have been great partners for the last 35 years on this very successful economic development project; both of them have,” Beers said.