The story below is a preview from our May/June 2016 issue. For the full story Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Well, for one thing, the first “Best of Roanoke” in this magazine—March, 1986—was actually called “The Best and Worst of Roanoke.”
Most prominent “Worsts” from 30 years ago?
• The airport.
• Traffic on 419.
• Local salaries.
• K92 (which also won for best radio station.)
• Lack of local government consolidation.
Yeah, what’s really changed in three decades?
Not a whole lot when you consider the time. Festival in the Park was a winner. The Roanoker Restaurant. Robin Reed. Jane Powell. Kroger. Peaks of Otter. WDBJ News. Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Luigi’s Restaurant. Center in the Square.
Then again, consider this list of long-gone Best of Roanoke winners (not to mention some of the categories themselves):
Donna Dean was Best Sex Symbol (Female). Reed, by the way, was the male winner.
Best Restaurant Overall was the late, lamented Library.
Best Place to Pick up Somebody (!): Charades.
I guess we have moved forward some when the Best Place to Buy Wine/Cheese was Martha’s Vineyard, deep in Tanglewood Mall, where there’s like a college now.
Bart Prater was Best Local Radio Personality; and good enough to get national attention.
Dominion Bank was our favorite bank. It was pretty big and it was home-town. Before it got devoured by, sequentially, First Union, Wachovia and Wells Fargo.
Thalhimers was Best Department Store, back when the department store was still a viable entity.
Roanoke Mayor Noel Taylor was our Most Trusted Politician.
Yes, the Best of Roanoke 30 years ago revolved a great deal around personalities, places to eat (this magazine’s Dining Awards broke away from the Best of Roanoke later in 1986), and our readers’ favorite destinations and attractions.
But if there is one overriding sentiment from that set of balloting, it is governmental consolidation, with 79 percent of all voters expressing an opinion. And with consolidation being the winner for Best Thing That Could Make Roanoke a Better Place. From the Department of Not Much Changes over 30 Years, here are the 1986 top-10 reasons for consolidation:
1. Save tax dollars.
2. End duplication of services.
3. Fuel economic growth.
4. Provide better services.
5. Less government.
6. Unify the valley.
7. “It just makes sense.”
8. Improve schools.
9. More agreement on what’s to be done.
10. Better police protection.
The Roanoke Valley has been largely silent about the issue since the failed referendum in the fall of 1990. But that top-10 list of reasons looks as reasonable today as it did 30 years ago. We’re a bigger place than we were those three decades back, but we are still not a big enough place to have a Roanoke City, a Roanoke County, a Salem and a Vinton all bunched up and invidually governed, policed and fire-protected inside a county-sized area that in most other parts of the country would just be Roanoke County, which, back in 1990, was the force in defeating the referendum.
It would entail lots and lots of work, to be sure, to re-kickstart a consolidation effort in the Roanoke Valley. But a positive result might be the very best Best of Roanoke we could ever have.
