When launching an upscale music venue, acoustics are crucial — even more so in a building that wasn’t constructed with quality sound in mind.
The Exchange Music Hall passed the test on Dec. 31, in a combination New Year’s Eve party, grand opening and preview of what’s to come.
The venue, part of a restaurant and hotel complex inside the 113-year-old First National Exchange Bank in downtown Roanoke, welcomed more than 1,000 people for a rock-and-soul double bill. The audience members walked into the bank’s former lobby, now festooned with acoustic tile, floor carpeting and banners draped across the ceiling high above.
Grace Potter, who has rocked stages in Roanoke and Blacksburg, along with multiple FloydFests, told an audience of about 1,100 that Roanoke was her “second home.”
Her headlining set was a powerful showcase that capped 2025 and launched 2026.
Days later, some audience members and one of the venue owners called it a success. Caila Pinkleton of Roanoke said the night ranked “high on the list” of big nights out she has experienced.
“NYE can be a logistical nightmare with low payoff, but this year was the opposite!” Pinkleton wrote in a message exchange. “We had a lot of fun and things went pretty smoothly. No long lines or waiting around in the cold.”
It took a couple of years’ worth of hard work to get there, said John McBroom, CEO of Across-the-Way Productions, which puts on FloydFest. McBroom, one of four investors in the building at Jefferson Street and Campbell Avenue, recalled being in the building when the bank was still in business.
“If there were more than three people talking, it just turned into this horrible den of reverberation,” McBroom said.
It wasn’t any different when one of his project partners, Lucas Thornton, brought him in to check out the space a couple of years ago, McBroom said. The only difference was that it was a wreck of file cabinets and other junk that had been lying around since Wells Fargo closed the bank in 2016.
The “iconic structure” was “dilapidated,” he said.
“It’s a beautiful old building that needed what we’re giving it,” McBroom said. “I think, honestly, if the unthinkable had happened and no one would’ve taken on this building and the city would have been like, ‘Well, we really need to raze it, to put something there,’ this would have been another Victory Stadium argument.”
McBroom, Thornton, restaurateur J.P. Powell and hotelier Ashton Wilson negated any potential argument by developing The Exchange, a restaurant called ¡Suerte! and The Promissory, a 27-room boutique hotel.
The hotel is largely complete, and all its rooms were in use for the New Year’s party, with Potter, her family and band occupying several, McBroom said. The Spanish restaurant is scheduled to open about March, and The Exchange will wait until then to put on more concerts, he said. Across-the-Way Productions is leasing the music space.
“This is going to be our new home, our new cornerstone,” he said.
The entire development — hotel, venue and restaurant — is expected to cost $12 million all told, Thornton said.
Challenges arose while renovating the building, which is about 55,000 square feet, but “nothing too out of the ordinary or difficult,” Thornton said in an email. The structure, like much of downtown, is built on top of running water, so ensuring a “dry building” was a challenge, he wrote. A small fire last spring destroyed some electrical equipment, he added.
Some drama arose as New Year’s Eve approached — the city didn’t issue a temporary certificate of occupancy until Dec. 30, McBroom confirmed.
“Getting anything done the last week of the year, I don’t recommend that,” McBroom said. “I can’t argue that it was a nail-biter. We had been pretty much, I’m not going to say assured, but we weren’t too terrified that we weren’t going to get it, and we also understood that we weren’t going to get it until the last minute.”
Developing the vibe
Meanwhile, AtWP staff worked to get the room sounding and feeling correct. McBroom credited Roanoke-based audio-visual business Stage Sound Inc.’s president, Reid Henion, with leading efforts to get the best acoustics in the 13,000-square-foot space. Henion was first on McBroom’s mind when it came time to set it up for sound.
AtWP staff worked to get the room feeling right, as well, and it appears mostly to have worked. McBroom said the flow of the old bank dictated how to design the music venue.
“It was pretty easy for the most part,” he said.
Two bars were open on the mezzanine, including a VIP space with a television playing sets by Potter and opening act Holy Roller. The concert screened on the walls at either side of the stage, as well.
Bars on the main floor and in the basement kept drinks flowing.
Chelsea DeTorres, who, with Pinkleton, was part of a friend group that came out for the show, gave it an “8/10 for a NYE” show.
“I loved the multiple bar options to get drinks and the side screens to help view the stage if you were in back,” DeTorres, a Roanoke resident, wrote in a message exchange. “I do think carpet was an odd choice for a concert venue, but overall thought it was well done.”
The carpet, McBroom said, was a big part of controlling sound in the room.
“My husband and I regularly see concerts in Charlottesville, Raleigh, Richmond and have been dying for a venue of this size downtown,” DeTorres wrote. “We’re really hoping we’ll see bands that regularly pass Roanoke come through (especially if they are not ‘jam bands!!’).”
Pinkleton, who also looks forward to seeing what performers are coming next, noted lags in the video streams that she hopes can be fixed, and she would like to see more furnishings and decor in the vault area of the basement (a giant locking door still stands there), such as “cozy couches.”
“I appreciated coat check and the many bars/bathrooms,” she wrote. “I didn’t have to wait too long in line anywhere.”
AtWP principles will look to make improvements that they noted after the premiere party.
“We have a lot of nip-and-tucking to do, and figuring out where … this should be or that should be, but for the most part it worked out about as beautifully as we could imagine,” McBroom said.
There were issues with crowd flow at the back of the room, where groups of people congregated and choked off main-floor bar access. There is work to be done improving that, but overall, he said he couldn’t have imagined it going better.
In general, downtown parking is a complaint that Roanokers and those outside the city limits express often. McBroom said that The Exchange staff didn’t hear about any issues, though, even on New Year’s Eve. He said the venue website’s frequently asked questions page includes information about other nearby lots, and available street parking won’t be monitored for tickets during most of the music hall’s hours.
Potter, the venue’s first-ever headliner, appeared to have loved her experience.
“Roanoke, you rang in the new year with us and sold out a brand new room,” Potter’s social media accounts posted. “@theexchangeva What a way to start. I’m feeling so fired up for new music and more shows in 2026. Thank you for bringing the heat and the love 🤍”
General admission tickets were $75, but expect a range from free to significantly more expensive, depending on the act, with “special experiences” at a premium, McBroom said. AtWP is in talks with performers but hasn’t booked any more shows yet. Audiences can expect a variety of genres in the room.
“I think it’s going to be a lot like FloydFest in that it’s going be all over the place [stylistically], and it’s just going to be who we feel is going be a good fit.”
Making room to groove
The room fills a niche that hadn’t existed in Roanoke since the 20th century. The American Legion Auditorium, formerly the Roanoke Civic Auditorium, could fit about 2,000, with lots of standing room space on the main floor, according to Wick Moorman, a Roanoke Valley resident who studies the region’s music history. It burned in 1957.
Many other large standing-room spaces came and went in the years since, but such venues as the King’s Inn (later the Iroquois Club) and the Lakeside Amusement Park Ballroom didn’t hold as many as 1,000.
Venues that occupied what is now Charter Hall, on the Roanoke City Market Building’s top floor, capped out at no more than 500 standing.
The Exchange fits a few hundred more than Jefferson Center, which seats about 900 but doesn’t have significant room for dancing. Dylan Locke, who has owned the Floyd Country Store since 2014, was artistic director at Jefferson Center for several years, ending in 2015. He said he often wished he had more standing room at Jefferson Center’s Shaftman Performance Hall for R&B, soul and salsa shows.
“There’s dozens and dozens of shows [where] the seats were less than ideal — Trombone Shorty and all kinds of dancing shows where people would enjoy the event better,” Locke said. “I do think that there’s also older people that you have to think about, who maybe 20 years ago would have been happy standing all night and can’t do that anymore.
“But certainly if it’s a dance band, you want a dance floor, and having a space with a bunch of seats in it is not conducive to the right type of environment for that type of presentation.”
Locke, who has worked frequently with McBroom, including managing FloydFest’s folklife workshop stage, said he trusts that team to book high-quality concerts.
“I mean, they’re some of the best,” he said. “I think it all depends on whether Roanoke, the surrounding areas, the community in New River Valley and Roanoke Valley are hungry for it. … There’s not a better thing in my mind for people to be spending their time doing. It’s just really a great way to connect, sort of leave their differences at the door and find this common space around something that we all love, which is music.
“I’m a super fan of anyone who’s making an effort to create that kind of space for humans to gather, and then I just hope that they show up and support it, you know.”
Listeners and dancers can expect show announcements over the next few weeks and months.
“What we’re really hoping is that we’re going to be picking up … the touring bands that wouldn’t normally stop here, because they’re either too big for Martin’s or too small for [Berglund Center],” McBroom said. “I think it’s just going to be one of the puzzle pieces that we’ve never been able to put in the puzzle.
“I’m very interested to see, especially when the word gets out through the artist community, because when a room sounds good, that helps more than just about anything.“
He envisions The Exchange as a dance hall along the lines of The Orange Peel, in Asheville, North Carolina, and the 9:30 Club, in Washington, D.C. — typically for standing-room crowds, with some seating. The Exchange will adapt the room configuration to host performers at varying career levels, and the venue will also be available for private events.
“I think it’s going to work,” he said. “I think we’re going to try and throw as many different scenarios at it as possible, obviously all with the intent of being sustainable and making a little bit of money, too.”
