Historical Roanoke bank to reopen as music hall, hotel and restaurant

The First National Exchange Bank building at the corner of Jefferson Street and Campbell Avenue in downtown Roanoke closed in 2016.

After undergoing between $10 million and $11 million in renovations, the building is about to start a second life housing a boutique hotel, restaurant and 1,200-capacity venue called The Exchange Music Hall.

Its doors will open New Year’s Eve for an inaugural concert by rocker Grace Potter, according to a Friday announcement by Across-the-Way Productions, the event management company behind FloydFest, an annual music festival held in Floyd County, about 30 miles from the Star City.

The Promissory, a 27-room boutique hotel in the building, is now taking reservations for January stays. ¡Suerte!, a Spanish restaurant being developed by Roanoke restaurateur J.P. Powell, will open in March.

First National Exchange, the entity behind the project, is made up of Powell; John McBroom, CEO of Across-the-Way Productions; Lucas Thornton, founder of Roanoke development company Hist:Re Partners; and Ashton L. Wilson, who has previously worked with Thornton on a development project.

“What I do best is build partnerships,” Thornton said Monday.

While the entity isn’t a nonprofit, the main goal behind renovating the First National Exchange Bank building wasn’t to rake in cash.

“We have a nonmonetary emphasis or focus around improving Roanoke through music,” Thornton said.

When Thornton first gave thought to turning the building into a music hall, McBroom was the first call he made. When the pair toured the site, however, McBroom wasn’t blown away.

“The sound when we were in there was terrible,” McBroom said.  “It’s a big, reverberous space.”

To fix that, developers invested in audio systems and fabrics and other techniques that help to diffuse sound.

“There’s a huge team of audio engineers, lighting engineers, structural engineers, helping us get this [to do] exactly what we hope it will do,” McBroom said.

The acts booked at the venue will include Americana, indie rock and what McBroom calls “cool country.” Most events will be standing shows.

The chance to play in the historical building, which has a neoclassical style and a marble and granite exterior, will be a draw for some acts that otherwise wouldn’t play Roanoke, Thornton said.

“That’s sort of the backbone of our business plan is to get really great bands because we have a really great hall,” Thornton said.

“The only way this was going to work was if the room looked and sounded perfect,” McBroom said.

Will people come? 

Earlier this year, the Jefferson Center, a nonprofit performing arts center within the former Jefferson High School in Roanoke, told city officials that it’s struggling financially due to ongoing capital and maintenance needs in the circa-1922 building.

The city-owned Berglund Center, which has an arena that can accommodate up to 10,000 attendees, and a 2,148-seat Performing Arts Theatre, has a $2.5 million budget shortfall, according to a press release circulated in October by state Sen. David Suetterlein and Del. Joe McNamara.

The difficulties of those two venues aren’t reflective of a population that doesn’t turn out for music, Thornton stressed.

“I think in each case that there may be peculiarities around the ownership and development of the structures that makes them struggle to operate profitably,” he said.

Nor does Thornton think Roanoke’s smaller music venues like 5 Points Music Sanctuary or Martin’s Downtown Bar & Grill or the Harvester Performance Center, a mid-sized music venue serving Rocky Mount, will take a hit from The Exchange.

“I operate from a place of abundance, rather than scarcity,” Thornton said.

In Asheville, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, he pointed out, club owners don’t schedule concerts for nights when other clubs don’t have a show booked.

“Those guys aren’t like, ‘Well, let’s not have a show tonight because there’s six other shows,’” Thornton said. “People just go to Nashville not knowing who’s showing up or who’s playing, because they know there are going to be people playing they want to see. So … really my hope is that Roanoke starts to get better understood for what I think it is and can be, which is Virginia’s Music City.”

Shows at The Exchange will continue in the spring with a year-round slate of events.

A good night’s rest

Hist:Re Partners is the general contractor on the project.

The hotel features 14 one-bedroom suites, eight two-bedroom suites, three lofts and two classic rooms. It will be operated by Retro Hospitality, a Richmond-based boutique hospitality firm which also operates The Lofts at Downtown Salem and The Bee Hotel in Danville.

The logo for The Promissory will include lions, a nod to the lions who sit at the façade of the First National Exchange Bank.

Two additions were made to the original bank building in 1954 and 1963. The hotel occupies the additions.

McBroom isn’t worried about the shows being too noisy for guests of the hotel.

“I’m sure you’re gonna know something’s going on, but I can’t imagine that it’s going to be too disruptive,” he said.