Here’s a GRANDIOSE IDEA!

The Roanoke Rapids Theatre with a matinee and two nightly shows a day with several of the smaller rooms filled with night lifers and a casino style Internet gaming atmosphere providing enjoyment to thousands of patrons.

Tens of Thousands of music fans flooding into the Festival Park at Carolina Crossroads for several one day concerts a month.

The Centre at Halifax Community College is filled with another 1,500 attending several shows each weekend.

The People’s Dinner Theater is alive with weekend shows and after partygoers.

There’s such a demand for entertainment that the Roanoke Rapids High School Auditorium, The Civic Center and The Mystique is filled with music every Friday and Saturday nights.

Local night spots and restaurants are hopping with after parties. The motels are filled, the restaurants are busy and the retail stores are bustling.

This gives rise to the opportunity for other businesses such as additional restaurants, shopping centers and venues to build and make the Carolina Crossroads into what it was meant to be.

From a community point of view, we all need this to happen. It’s the way the Carolina Crossroads development project was supposed to happen. The Theatre acts as a magnet to draw in entertainment and supporting businesses. As the other businesses build, the property taxes they pay goes toward paying off the debt of the development cost.

With the City poised to make the decisions to begin allowing the Roanoke Rapids Theatre to operate as described above, the next major challenge the city should take on is an Economic Developer/Business Recruiter.

Realizing times are tough, the prospects of a flood of new businesses will be limited, but if we’re not asking, we will definitely not get anything.

Sure, it’s a grandiose idea, but it can still happen.

Andy Whitby writes about the Live Music Scene in the Roanoke Valley and maintains the website www.atthemic.com which is updated weekly with the current live entertainment events.