The new bridge, skate park, and blueway will be welcomed by pedestrians, businesses, and customers.
Written & Photographed by Dan Smith
It’s been a tough few years for restaurateur Bruce Todaro, his wife Peggy, and their six kids. They own The Green Goat, a popular eatery on the Roanoke Valley Greenway in the Wasena neighborhood.
As good as that sounds, it has come with some very real challenges, especially in the last few years. For the past 30 years, Bruce has worked the high-end restaurant circuit in Roanoke and weathered all of manner decisions and events that would break a lesser professional.
Through it all, though, the family has maintained and even seen the greenway business grow. The Todaros bought the adjacent ice cream shop (Hang Ten) recently, as well. Todaro is a realist, if he is nothing else, and he has gone with the flow (literal flow twice, when hurricane flood waters invaded).
The most imposing challenge—the new 900-foot, $42 million Wasena Bridge, which is nearing completion—is perhaps the mother of those barriers, supplanting COVID-19 and the floods.
As of late March, the bridge is 85% completed and will soon carry traffic quickly and efficiently through the neighborhood and toward downtown. For the past two years, it has been a barrier.
Archer-Western, which was recently named the top bridge builder in the country, has faced complex regulations, community concerns, geological and soil stability issues, funding, coordination with utilities, safety compliance, and timelines.
In addition to the disruption the bridge has caused, Roanoke City has also built a bicycle and skateboard park ($1.6 million with the help of Salem, Vinton, and private investors). It is already getting heavy use in the shadow of the bridge construction. The city is well underway with a new kayak/canoe landing in Wasena Park, about 50 yards from the skateboard/bike park. With the additions, the area will have a greenway and a blueway.
The greenway in Wasena has been one of the most popular stretches of the paved recreational road since the greenway work began in 2000.
The old Wasena Bridge was declared unsafe in 2018, and Roanoke City Council decided the best move was to replace it. Construction of the new skateboard/bike park had been recommended for years and was included in the project. Late in the game, the canoe-kayak landing was funded.
All through these fluctuations, the Todaro family was directly affected, not only by the bridge, but also in their 4,000-foot brownstone home on Dale Avenue—on the other side of the bridge.
“We’ve been affected personally and professionally,” said Todaro. His six kids, ranging from 29 to 6, “used to be able to walk across the bridge to get to the restaurant or catch the school bus. The kids were back and forth across the bridge three times a day.” The bridgework forced work-arounds for nearly everything the Todaros did, and as important, the construction hurt business.
“We were down about 30% in 2024 and about 30% in 2025,” he said. “We are a destination business, so we are still successful, but we lost the people who walked by the restaurant on the greenway and decided to stop in. Drop-ins were probably 30% of our business. We lost casual customers.
“We went from a park setting to a construction site,” Todaro said. “During COVID, the greenway was closed and we had to work around that. We couldn’t feed people inside, so we had to give them their food outside, and we set up tables there. COVID was actually a little worse than the bridge.”
But there are plenty of bright spots, even now, and especially as the weather welcomes outdoor lovers. “We are packed on weekends,” said Todaro.
And pretty soon, the traffic should be back to normal.
The story above first appeared in our May/June 2026 issue.
