Difficulties<\/strong><\/p>\nAt the first focus group meeting in January, Sherman Stovall, a former Roanoke deputy city manager who now works as a consultant, painted the Berglund Center\u2019s grim financial picture. The city of Roanoke subsidized the Berglund Civic Center by $2.5 million in fiscal 2026. Built in 1971, the civic center also faces more than $30 million in deferred maintenance.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the age of the building, what we are encountering is a significant number of unplanned maintenance expenses that have to be addressed,\u201d Stovall said.<\/p>\n
How did Roanoke get here?<\/p>\n
In the 1980s and 1990s, city officials\u2019 priorities changed, and less was invested in capital needs, according to Nash.<\/p>\n
\u201cPointing fingers only gets you as far as your finger,\u201d Nash said, quoting his grandfather. \u201cNow it\u2019s our responsibility to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additionally, the civic center faces increasing competition for entertainment dollars. Nearby are the Salem Civic Center and the Jefferson Center, a performing arts venue. The Exchange, a new music hall in downtown Roanoke, has a 1,200-person capacity. Music lovers in the Roanoke Valley also travel to Rocky Mount to see shows at The Harvester Performance Center and to Danville\u2019s Caesars Virginia hotel and casino, where rock band Heart recently played. Some make the trek to the Greensboro Complex in North Carolina.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly, having a variety of live entertainment venues results in it being a challenge for us to compete in the marketplace,\u201d Stovall said.<\/p>\n
The Berglund Center Coliseum can seat about 10,500. The Berglund Performing Arts Theatre next door holds 2,148.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be challenging for us to attract top-tier acts that you see in primary and secondary markets,\u201d Stovall said. \u201cBecause of the size of our venue, it will not generate sufficient income to make it attractive for certain level or certain tiers of performers to perform in Roanoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robyn Schon joined the civic center in the late 1990s and has managed the facility since 2011. At the January focus group meeting, Schon said the civic center offers nearly 400 events each year. \u201cThat is a lot for a venue our size,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Schon gets annoyed by people who complain that the civic center only books country acts.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, we don\u2019t get Beyonc\u00e9,\u201d Schon said. \u201cShe\u2019s a multimillion-dollar act.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Schon pointed out, civic center has hosted sold-out shows with comedian and actor Kevin Hart and has hosted performers Elton John and Cher multiple times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s not a type of music that we don\u2019t host,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Rolling the dice<\/strong><\/p>\nA\u00a0casino\u00a0in Roanoke is\u00a0far from a\u00a0sure bet. Under Virginia law, local governments seeking a casino must first receive approval from the General Assembly before holding a local referendum.<\/p>\n
No state legislator representing Roanoke has publicly supported the idea, and the General Assembly took no action this year. Even so, city leaders haven\u2019t given up on the idea, according to Cobb.<\/p>\n
Roanoke, Cobb noted, recently received a $770,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2025 to study the area within a 0.5-mile radius to Roanoke\u2019s Amtrak platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some concurrent things happening that I think could really help us position ourselves for a private-public partnership or an investment to both help us address the upgrades that are needed at the Berglund Center, but also just enhance the overall amenities that are available for people who come to Roanoke,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for the focus group meetings, Cobb believes they have been helpful.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just inviting the public to think outside the box, and I\u2019m hopeful too that it\u2019s inviting potential investors and developers to think about, \u2018What potential partnerships could we have with the city that maybe we haven\u2019t thought about before?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nash plans to put together a package containing the information gathered during the focus group meetings for city council members to study as they continue to discuss the civic center\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
No matter what happens in Richmond down the line, Nash said, the city must begin planning now for the civic center\u2019s future.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless\u00a0if we get a casino or we don\u2019t,\u201d he said, \u201cit doesn\u2019t change the fact that the amount we subsidize is growing, the deferred maintenance is increasing, and it\u2019s a vital asset for our city that\u2019s currently not really an asset but more of a liability.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t
\n<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source virginiabusiness.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUMMARY: Roanoke\u2018s civic center complex needs about $30 million in deferred maintenance. The complex required $2.5 million in subsidies from the city in FY26. Focus group participants have discussed the site\u2019s potential redevelopment, including the possibility of a casino. Phazhon Nash\u2019s grandfather lived in a part of Roanoke where homes were demolished during urban renewal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2424081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[378761,44569,475118,475119,306820,391392,349157],"class_list":["post-2424080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-berglund-center","tag-casino","tag-city-of-roanoke","tag-econdev","tag-economic-development","tag-roanoke","tag-tourism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Roanoke-explores-Berglund-Center-redevelopment.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2424080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2424082,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424080\/revisions\/2424082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2424081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2424080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2424080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2424080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}