downtown roanoke

[tgbwc]

Originally Posted by seanpecor

I think the trolley is a great idea. It's nice to learn that Carilion folks are making good use of it.

I wonder if we'll ever see year-round extended shopping hours beyond 5 or 6pm downtown? I suppose there would have to be enough business after hours to justify the expense and hassle of training/retaining additional staff. A really ingenious/stupid experiment for the city would be to approach the downtown merchants and offer to subsidize the hiring/training of evening staffers. Couple that with an ad campaign touting evening shopping downtown and it might create alot of opportunity for the city to generate ROI through additional business tax revenue.

Sean

These are some interesting thoughts.

At the time, my wife and I just thought that it seemed to us the shops would be open as the restaurants we starting to get busy on a Friday night. Just our observation. They must not get enough evening business, but we weren't the only ones tugging on doors of shops that were closed.

[Diamond Dave]

I don't know if there's an easy answer to the downtown shopping dilemma. I think every downtown shopping district faces it. Dickens of a Christmas is designed to get folks downtown and shopping after hours; it may be the only time of year when there is sufficient volume to justify it.

A grocery store downtown would definitely be open after 5 pm and could help spin off some business to the other stores.

[VALover]

I would love it if the stores were open later down there. We went to Dickens all three weeks and it was a really fun time.