Taubmans give $25 million for Carilion cancer center

Carilion Clinic will soon break ground on a new building for an expanded cancer program thanks to a $25 million gift from a Star City family, the largest ever made to the nonprofit health care system.

The gift from former Advance Auto Parts CEO Nicholas Taubman, also a past U.S. ambassador to Romania, and his wife, Jenny, will help establish the Carilion Taubman Cancer Center.

The seven-story facility will be located at Carilion’s Riverside Campus. It is a planned upgrade for the current Carilion cancer treatment center, which was built in 1980 and sits on South Jefferson Street.

“We wanted not just to replace the cancer center but create a new environment — a whole ecosystem for advanced clinical care, new therapies and research — with our partner Virginia Tech,” says outgoing Carilion CEO Nancy Howell Agee, who announced her retirement in July. Carilion President Steve Arner is set to succeed her as CEO on Oct. 1.

Agee, who will serve as CEO emeritus through September 2025, focusing on phil-anthropy, should have plenty to keep her busy. With the Taubmans’ gift, Carilion has raised more than $70 million of the expected $100 million cost of the cancer center, and Agee says Carilion is “actively fundraising” for the remainder.

For the Taubmans, their gift was an opportunity to drastically change the cancer treatment options for the 1 million people in Virginia and West Virginia served by Carilion. The new cancer facility will provide people in the Roanoke Valley and adjacent areas a closer option for treatments they currently travel out of the region to receive.

“People who have cancer, they have jobs, families. They have obligations. They can’t take a week to drive somewhere and get treatment,” Nicholas Taubman says. “It needs to be here.”

The Taubman family supports local health care in part because of an obligation to their former Advance Auto employees, according to Nicholas Taubman. Roanoke was the company’s headquarters from its founding in 1932 by Taubman’s father, Arthur, until 2018, when it moved to Raleigh, North Carolina.

“The people who worked for us live in this area … and all of these people need medical care,” says Nicholas Taubman, who says he no longer has a financial stake in Advance Auto.

Agee says Carilion will break ground on the new facility in October and expects doors to open in late 2026 or early 2027.