Roanoke Council Approves $12M Facade Grant Program for Downtown Corridor

Roanoke City Council voted 6-1 Monday night to create a $12 million matching grant program for storefront renovations along Campbell Avenue and Jefferson Street, the largest downtown-facing investment the body has approved since the Market Building refurbishment in 2019.

The program, called Downtown Frontage Initiative, will cover up to 40% of exterior renovation costs for buildings in a corridor that runs from the Hotel Roanoke footbridge south to Elmwood Park. Grants max out at $150,000 per property. Applications open June 1; the first tranche of awards is expected in August.

“This isn’t a handout — it’s a partnership,” Mayor Sherman Lea said after the vote. “The storefronts on Campbell haven’t been refreshed in some cases since the late ’90s. If we want to stop losing tenants to Salem and Christiansburg, the street has to start pulling its weight.”

Councilmember Vivian Sanchez-Jones, who co-sponsored the measure, said the money comes from bond proceeds the city had earmarked for economic development. “We are not touching the general fund. We are not raising taxes to do this,” she said during the meeting.

Councilmember Joe Cobb cast the lone dissent, saying the program favored property owners over tenants. “I’d rather see us put twelve million dollars into the people who rent these buildings — the small businesses that actually get run off when rents go up after the renovation,” Cobb said.

Downtown Roanoke Inc. president Tina Workman, who spoke in favor of the program at the meeting’s public comment period, told Salt the grant could trigger a cascade of secondary investment. “For every dollar a property owner pulls down in matching funds, we’ve seen $3 to $4 of follow-on private spend in comparable programs in Lynchburg and Danville,” she said.

The program comes after a year in which the downtown office vacancy rate climbed to 18.2%, according to a Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer report released last month. Restaurant and retail vacancy, which had been holding near 9%, ticked up to 12.6% in the first quarter.

Several downtown property owners, including the family that owns the 100-block of Campbell, have told the city they were waiting on a grant program before committing capital to long-deferred facade work, according to an April memo from City Manager Bob Cowell’s office.

Workman said her organization will host three information sessions in May to walk owners through the application process. The first is scheduled for May 7 at the CoLab on Kirk Avenue.

“This is the moment we’ve been asking for for three years,” Workman said. “Now the hard part — actually getting picks in the ground.”