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Photo above: Julianne Rainone / Courtesy of The Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries
What once housed the largest drugstore in the Roanoke Valley is now home to a thriving workspace community.
Green round tables, orange chairs and blue and green couches are scattered around the open room. People are bent over laptops, some wearing earbuds, some chatting softly to others. Lights shine through the glass walls of several small office spaces.
It’s the start of a new workday at the CoLab in Roanoke’s Grandin Village, an 11,000-square-foot co-working space where entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketing professionals and others work.
The CoLab opened in 2014, and it is one of the largest co-working spaces in the Roanoke Valley. It is part of a growing business trend in the United States, where there are thousands of similar ventures.
This modern look and purpose for the building at 1327 Grandin Road is a far cry from its original identity as Garland’s Drugstore, as seen in this photo when the newly built store opened on February 14, 1953. It wasn’t the only Garland’s Drugstore at the time, but the Grandin location then was considered the largest drugstore in the Roanoke Valley, according to “Roanoke Valley” (Then & Now series), a book by former Roanoke Mayor Nelson Harris and Harold McLeod.
The Grandin Road store once filled more than 1,000 prescriptions and made at least 600 deliveries in one day during the 1968 flu epidemic, according to chosi.org, a website that categorizes old drugstore bottles.
The Garland family eventually sold the stores, and a CVS Pharmacy moved into the Grandin space.
Later, CVS moved out, and the building became a multi-use space with various businesses operating inside it, including a florist, a coffee shop and a small pharmacy.
Now, the CoLab takes up the majority of the building, though a language service company and a management and consulting business are among several other businesses there.
Still, the CoLab brings a vibrancy and community atmosphere to Grandin Road, much like Garland’s Drugstore may have had when serving customers more than 60 years ago.
“Most of our members are folks that could choose to work from home,” said Brad Stephens, director of the CoLab. “However, they find that having the network of the CoLab and building off the energy of the space makes them more productive.”
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