Roanoke County approves four zoning and permit petitions, including hotel-to-apartment conversion

Roanoke County supervisors approved four zoning and special-use petitions during the board's Oct. 28 evening session, including a proposal to convert a former hotel into apartments and two rezoning requests for small development sites.

The board granted a special-use permit to Isla Boyd to operate a short-term rental on Colonial Avenue. The board also approved Hotel Shift Capital’s petition to convert the former Knight's End hotel on Thurlan Road into 105 apartments, a plan that would reduce the property's 120 hotel rooms to apartment units.

WRV Properties received rezoning approval for roughly 25.3 acres along Catawba Valley Drive, changing the parcel from agricultural residential to low-intensity industrial and winning a special-use permit to operate a swimming-pool construction yard at the site of the former Moose Lodge. Hamler Properties secured approval to rezone approximately 3.8 acres from agricultural residential to agricultural village center and to construct a multifamily development on Roushrough Road.

Eric Sushow, speaking for the Roanoke Regional Chamber, voiced support for the WRV Properties proposal; the recap said he spoke again in support of the Hamler Properties project later in the evening. The meeting transcript used two spellings for that speaker’s surname ("Sushow" and "Shusaw").

The recap recorded that the board "approved" each petition but did not include motion language, mover/second names, or vote tallies. The approvals were presented as final outcomes in the recap; the board's official minutes or the meeting video on Roanoke Valley Television's YouTube page would contain the formal records and vote counts.

The approvals followed a procedural meeting in which appointments, the consent agenda and departmental reports were also approved without discussion earlier in the day.