As the new year dawns, a downtown Roanoke landmark will be reborn as a hotel, music venue and eatery.
Plans for The Exchange Music Hall were unveiled Friday, the newest addition to a $10 million project transforming the old First National Exchange Bank. The venue will share space with The Promissory, a 27-room boutique hotel, and ¡Suerte!, a Spanish restaurant helmed by local restaurateur J.P. Powell.
The neoclassical granite building on Jefferson Street, with its tall marble columns and stone lions, was built in 1912. It sat vacant after the bank closed in 2016, until Roanoke developer Lucas Thornton and partners began their ambitious renovation project.
On Friday, the latest piece of the project was announced by Across-the-Way Productions, best known for putting on FloydFest, a multi-day music festival, for more than 20 years.
Across-the-Way will curate the programming at The Exchange, starting with a New Year’s Eve show featuring roots-rocker Grace Potter and Southern rock band Holy Roller. Sam Calhoun, chief operating officer of Across-the-Way, said the programming will continue in early spring 2026, with a year-round event and concert calendar.
“FloydFest has earned a reputation as a tastemaker festival, providing a vibrant stage for musicians across a wide spectrum of genres,” Calhoun said. That eclectic mix of artists will inform the programming at The Exchange.
“Starting this project three years ago, my partners and I coalesced around a singular mission: to incrementally improve the community that we know and love through the introduction of a culturally relevant music venue,” said Thornton, founder of development company Hist:Re Partners and a principal of First National Exchange, LC. “With this concert announced, we are one step closer to achieving that vision and we could not be more excited or more proud.”
John McBroom, another principal of First National Exchange LC, is a majority co-owner of Across-the-Way and FloydFest, along with Calhoun and Jessica Taylor. He said the idea for the music hall is “crazy and wonderful and one that takes true passion to pull off. … We are hopeful to bring a truly vibrant experience to the music scene in our hometown and raise the awareness of what Roanoke has to offer the world.”
As the renovation project progressed, Calhoun said Across-the-Way was approached to take over operation of the music hall with a multi-year partnership.
According to the developers, The Exchange will include a 35-foot-wide stage in what was once the bank’s high-ceilinged lobby. It will seat about 1,200 people, who will stand about where the tellers once stood. Or, they can watch from a mezzanine level or a VIP lounge. Instead of fixed seats, there will be removable seating in case a show would benefit more from a dance floor.
Roanoke already has a vibrant music scene, and the developers said they aren’t looking to compete with the city’s established venues, like 5 Points Music Sanctuary and the Jefferson Center (which are smaller than The Exchange) or the Berglund Performing Arts Theatre (which is larger).
Powell, who is also a musician, said in an interview with The Roanoke Times last year that he felt there was a “middle ground” for artists who draw crowds too large for 5 Points or too small for the Berglund Center. “There are a lot of bands that [The Exchange] would fit and the economics would work out.”
“Roanoke has needed a venue of this size for quite some time, so we don’t see it as competing, but rather complimenting the myriad venues that this city and region are so lucky to already have,” Calhoun said. “We champion our greater family of local independent venues and promoters.”
But there exists a niche in the region that he thinks The Exchange can fill.
“There are bands of a certain size that are looking to play a room the size of The Exchange,” Calhoun said. Without a venue of this size, these performers have bypassed Roanoke, instead “playing shows in Charlottesville or Richmond, and then when not having an appropriate-sized option in Roanoke kept trucking down I-81 to Knoxville, or south to Charlotte or Raleigh.”
More shows downtown would potentially attract additional tourists to dine, shop and stay — an economic boon that the bankers at the old First National Exchange would likely appreciate.
“We can now bring that talent to Roanoke audiences, and that’s very special to us and all involved in this entire project,” Calhoun said.
When it closed in 2016, Wells Fargo, the last financial institution to occupy the building, donated it to community development bank Virginia Community Capital. VCC solicited ideas for the building’s future at a public meeting, then sold it to Carilion Clinic. Carilion then sold it to Thornton’s group for $1 million in 2022.
Thornton said in an interview last year that Hist:Re Partners is committed to preserving the 113-year-old building’s architecture, including some of the chandeliers hanging from the lobby’s 40-foot ceiling, the bank vaults and other ornate decorative elements.
“The grandeur of the great hall from an interior perspective is, I think, second to none,” Thornton told The Roanoke Times in 2024.
The Promissory Hotel is now accepting reservations, beginning Jan. 12, 2026. The developers said it will feature the largest suite-style rooms in Roanoke.
The ¡Suerte! restaurant is also set to open next year.
The developers described it as an authentic Spanish restaurant with curated plates from Madrid, fresh housemade bread, and an extensive wine list. It’s inspired by a legendary New Orleans destination eatery called Bacchanal.
Seating will be both outdoors and indoors, in an atrium under the bank’s soaring ceiling.
About the New Year’s Eve show
The Exchange Music Hall is located at 201 S. Jefferson St. in downtown Roanoke. Presented by Blue Cow Arts Foundation Inc. and Across-the-Way Productions Inc., tickets for the Dec. 31 show with Grace Potter and Holy Roller are $75 in advance or $90 day of show; on sale now at theexchangeva.com and aftontickets.com/theexchange-gracepotter.
Doors open at 8 p.m. for the all-ages show.
Holy Roller will take the stage at 9 p.m., followed by Grace Potter at 10:30 p.m.
For more information about The Promissory Hotel, visit thepromissoryhotel.com.