On Monday, the Roanoke City Council will consider allocating up to $400,000 in next year’s budget to help turn the Washington Park caretaker’s cottage into an amphitheater.
The resolution also calls for the city manager, Valmarie Turner, to provide a letter of support to Friends of Washington Park Caretaker’s Cottage and other community organizations to pursue grants, complete a condition survey and undertake parts of the restoration of the structure.
The resolution also says that if funds are not secured through proposed grant applications and/or donations by October 2026, Turner is directed to proceed with the demolition of the cottage. Councilman Phazhon Nash, who wrote most of the resolution, said Friday that he did not know how much more funding would be needed to keep the cottage from being demolished.
The building, which dates to 1840, has been at the center of local activism since the early 1960s, when a city landfill was built in Washington Park, which is surrounded by predominantly Black neighborhoods.
The city reopened the Washington Park pool after renovating it last summer, and part of the original building plan was to demolish the cottage, which is in a state of disrepair. Work by groups including the Friends of Washington Park Caretaker’s Cottage led to a change in plans that allowed for the pool to be renovated and for the cottage to stay.
“I feel that in the context of all we have going on as a city, and also with the urban renewal apology presented to us, and some of the feedback, my wheels started to spin about what we can do,” Nash said during a phone call Thursday.
The city’s Equity and Empowerment Board came to the council late last year with a draft of an apology for urban renewal. During the 1960s, predominantly Black neighborhoods and businesses were forced to move to allow for the construction of Interstate 581 and developments such as the Berglund Center, which the city now wants to turn into an entertainment district with a casino.
Nash said that the Christiansburg Institute, a nonprofit that supports African American historical education in Southwest Virginia, will once again apply for a state grant that would bring funding to the cottage. The institute unsuccessfully applied for the grant last year.
Nash said last year that the application came back with comments that the judges did not see local government support for the project nor a clear end use for the project.
“They have to know if we get the money it’s not just going to be torn down,” Nash said. “So hopefully this resolution will help in the [application] packet and will be a good show of faith and trust and unity.”
Nash said the city’s contribution would come from several pots of funding —- including some from Roanoke City Public Schools’ fund balances that were returned to the city in the past year as the city changed its rules on how the schools handle those funds.
He said the city also would use money from $2 million that had been earmarked to pay interest on city-issued loans for the Riverdale redevelopment in Southeast Roanoke. He said Turner and the city’s budget team were able to restructure loans so that $2 million wasn’t needed for interest payments.
Turner did not respond to a call and voicemail seeking more details about where the funding for the Washington Park project would come from. She and the budget team last month presented an extremely tight budget that included $50 million in cuts to capital improvement projects, including other parks projects.
Nash said the cottage would be restored to be as historically accurate as possible. He said the rear wall would be torn down and the bricks saved. The inside of the cottage would be gutted to construct a stage.
“This is to create a community-oriented amphitheater,” Nash said. “It adds a real energy to the park and it’s a compromise. It’s not 100% what people want to see … but we have to think about our budget and that the longer we wait, the worse condition the cottage will deteriorate into.”
