Ask three business owners across three streets in downtown Roanoke what happened to their block this year, and you'll get the same undercurrent: something closed here, something else opened there, and nobody's quite sure yet which trend wins.

Roanoke, VA

Author: Roanoke Rambler Staff

Published: 1:37 PM EST August 19, 2026

Edited: 1:42 PM EST August 19, 2026

Start with what closed. Beamers 25, Unleashed and Tuco's Taqueria are all gone from downtown over the past 18 months and for at least one worker, the end arrived with zero warning. Beau Woodlee had barely started at Tuco's when a shift turned into a shutdown notice. "When I got there, I saw my manager had called me, so I called her back because when I went there I realized it was closed and the lights are off, what's going on? And so she was like, they actually shut us down this morning, and nobody found out until today," Woodlee said to reporters.

Now the other side of the ledger: three new businesses have opened downtown in 2026, a bar in the old Awful Arthur's space, a rotisserie restaurant in a former flower shop, and a Salem brewery's first bet on the city. That's the real, verifiable story here, not a boom, not a bust, but a district rewriting itself storefront by storefront.

The Haven, a sports bar built for the space that closed around it

The Haven opened Jan. 29 at 108 Campbell Ave. SE, moving into the space Awful Arthur's left behind when it announced its closing last June (Roanoke Rambler; Roanoke Rambler). It runs Monday 4 p.m. to midnight, Tuesday through Sunday 11 a.m. to midnight, with a menu built for lingering: appetizers ($10-$14), flatbreads ($13-$14), sandwiches ($12-$16), entrees up to $34 (Roanoke Rambler).

Three friends with three different resumes built it: restaurateur Jonathan Pate (Awful Arthur's Salem, Cast Plates & Pints, Pollard 107 South), tech-background operator Adam Leffell, and marketing executive Amy Dornton (Roanoke Rambler). Leffell, now managing partner, says the pitch was deliberately unpretentious: "We wanted to have a place that felt very local, so we decided 'let's open a place where people can come in, have a drink, something to eat, play some pool if they want to, watch sporting events' — so that was kind of our main reasoning for opening downtown." He's betting downtown's arc is bending up: "I think there's a lot of possibility for Downtown, as we continue to grow, and I think the city's doing things to revive everything so we're seeing that foot traffic start to show up," Leffell said (WSLS).

Dorothy: a florist's counter, now a bar

At 21 Church Ave. SW, chef Nate Sloan and business partner Thomas Ceddia turned a shuttered flower shop into Dorothy, which opened for lunch Feb. 10; its dinner service and upstairs sibling, Frank's, followed Feb. 19 (Roanoke Rambler). The bones of Fallon Florist are still visible on purpose — the old flower counter is now the bar, the stools came from Black Dog Salvage, a refinished church pew anchors the seating (Roanoke Rambler).

The menu ranges from a $7.50 chicken-and-dumpling soup at lunch to a $38 sirloin bistec with schmaltz potatoes and aerated béarnaise at dinner — Ceddia calls the dinner program "a modern way of dining" (Roanoke Rambler). He's even planning a wall collage as a wink at the name: "perhaps including some of famous Dorothys throughout history," he said.

Parkway Brewing: Salem exports its taproom

The newest of the three: Parkway Brewing Company opened a downtown Roanoke taproom at 17 Campbell Ave., on the ground floor of The Bower, around the end of July its second location after 14 years in Salem. Manager and brewmaster Mike Pesinger described the move in June, as construction wrapped, less as a reinvention than a transplant: "The reality is we have a really great community in Salem. We think it would be smart to export the same community down here. But maybe with more of that downtown feel to it," Pesinger said to reporters.

The honest scoreboard

Two frequently cited downtown "success stories" Bison Head Cigar & Lounge and Kirk and Soul, are evidence that downtown's momentum started before 2026. Over the last 18 months, three confirmed closures. Three confirmed openings. Same district, same year, opposite outcomes on different blocks.

Outside of the downtown area staples in the community like K&W closed after 88 years of serving communities like Roanoke, and Smokey Bones closed after over 20 years of service to Roanoke in 2025.

What to watch

• ¡Suerte!, the Spanish restaurant planned inside The Promissory hotel, is the one to track for credibility. Its opening has slipped across at least four stated windows — "first quarter of 2026," then "spring," then "June," then "summer" — on the hotel's own marketing pages. If it opens by fall, downtown's momentum story holds up; if it slips again, that's worth a follow-up on its own.
• Frank's Wild Years, the listening bar above Dorothy, was promised for "later in spring" and still hasn't been confirmed open. Same test: watch whether it actually launches or quietly becomes vaporware.
• The café component at Woodshed, next to Mast General Store, was still listed as "coming soon" as of a January tourism update — worth checking again before assuming it's running.
• Nobody has yet published hard numbers on downtown vacancy, crime, or parking utilization — Bison Head owner Jimmy Lewis's claim that "crime has been deterred and driven down" and that "parking has been made simpler" is his own characterization, not sourced to city data. A follow-up request to the city or Downtown Roanoke Inc. for actual vacancy and crime figures would turn this from an anecdotal trend into a measurable one.
• Parkway Brewing's downtown reception is untested — it's only been open a few weeks as of this writing, too early to know if it's pulling the "great community" feel Pesinger described in Salem, or whether downtown foot traffic can support a second taproom on top of the district's existing bars.

Other notable restaurant closures over the last few years:

Recent Permanent Closures

Old Roanoke: Restaurants Gone Since the 1970s–90s

The Roanoke Rambler