Roanoke’s First National Exchange Bank transforms into The Promissory Hotel, a luxury hotel with a music hall and Spanish-style restaurant that puts the city’s culture on center stage.
Photo above: The Promissory Hotel revamps a historic bank building with 27 suite-style units and tons of charm. Photos Courtesy of thepromissoryhotel.com
“What does a four-story grand hall in a functionally obsolete building mean in 2025?” That’s the question Lucas Thornton and his development firm, HistRe Partners, sought to answer three years ago when they acquired Roanoke’s historic First National Exchange Bank.
“The obvious and intimidating answer was a performance space. There was an opportunity to do something that really hasn’t been done in Roanoke but that Roanoke is well-primed: a music venue accommodating 1,000 people geared toward live music and standing shows.”
“The project was intimidating because the room is so bright and loud. The one thing an artist hates more than anything is a badly-sounding building so we are really focused on making this room sound great.”
To help make this possible, Thornton partnered with John McBroom, President and CEO of Across The Way Productions, and Reid Henion, President of Stage Sound, to engineer acoustic treatments.
By producing a music venue for artists to stop in between D.C. and Charlotte or Nashville, Thornton wants to make it increasingly obvious and apparent to everyone in Virginia that Roanoke is Virginia’s music city.
Headlined by Grace Potter, The Exchange Music Hall opened its doors New Year’s Eve.
While the grand hall is The Exchange, the rest of the building will house The Promissory Hotel and ¡Suerte! Restaurant.
The Promissory will offer 27 suite-style hotel units with a four-story atrium to provide natural light inside a building which was built from the outside in.
Thornton worked with The National Park Service to keep the building’s historical relevance. As a result, each unit has its own charm and character with unique floor plans and interior features for a boutique hotel experience.
¡Suerte!, slated to open in early March, will be a Spanish-style restaurant with a complex menu featuring tapas for accessibility and affordability but also heartier dishes like paella.
“My first call was to JP Powell, who is one of the partners behind Lucky and Fortunato. I admire the way JP and Hunter [Johnson] have been able to pull the culinary and social experience of restaurants in Roanoke forward through creating ambiance. In all of their restaurants, there’s not a single TV, and that’s the kind of thing I wanted to do here.”
With all three projects, Thornton, a native Roanoker, hopes other locals see Roanoke the way he does: as a culturally relevant city.
The story above is from our January/February 2026 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
