West Pavilion brick repair project won't wrap until summer 2027, more than two years after the street first shut down.

Roanoke, VA

Author: Roanoke Rambler Staff

Published: 12:30 AM EST August 12, 2026

Edited: 12:37 AM EST August 12, 2026

ROANOKE, Va. — The stretch of Belleview Avenue that has funneled hospital traffic onto detours for more than a year isn't reopening anytime soon. Carilion Clinic says the road will stay closed through the "next phase" of construction on Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital's West Pavilion, with the overall project not expected to finish until summer 2027.

The confirmation came in a statement to the Roanoke Rambler from Kevin Berry of Carilion's communications, marketing and planning team.

"The current work involves the next phase of Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital's West Pavilion brick repair project," Berry wrote. "Bellevue Avenue remains closed while this work is underway. The overall project is expected to be completed by summer 2027, with the street expected to fully reopen once construction is complete and it is safe to do so. We will continue to provide updates as major project milestones are reached."

It's the clearest timeline Carilion has offered since the closure began, and it means drivers, patients and hospital staff navigating the tangle of detours around Jefferson Street, Belleview Avenue and Hamilton Terrace should expect the disruption to remain in place for roughly another year.

How it started

Carilion first closed the portion of Belleview Avenue next to the West Pavilion, described by the hospital as "the brick tower nearest the river", on the afternoon of June 24, 2025, saying the closure was needed "out of an abundance of caution" while the health system finalized construction plans for the building's facade (Carilion Clinic). At the time, Carilion said crews had identified wear on the pavilion's brick exterior "typical of brickwork of this age" and were moving to remove and replace it.

Hamilton Terrace was closed to through traffic along with Belleview, and Carilion pointed drivers toward a detour using Walnut Avenue and Jefferson Street. The health system said at the time it did not anticipate disruptions to hospital services and that project updates would follow "as details become available".

That work followed an earlier round of sidewalk closures in front of the hospital that began in June 2025, when scaffolding first went up around the West Pavilion's entrances as part of what Carilion described as the "initial phase" of maintenance on the building (Carilion Clinic).

Detours still in effect

More than a year later, the same workaround remains in place, according to Carilion's hospital location page: the Terrace View Garage and hospital's North Entrance are reachable only via Walnut Avenue, all parking garages remain open, and shuttle service has been increased. Pedestrians are directed to use the Terrace View Garage tunnel or an alternate crosswalk across Belleview near the Jefferson Street bridge (Carilion Clinic).

Neighbors have been asking questions

The long, open-ended nature of the closure has drawn notice and speculation from residents. In a Roanoke subreddit thread last summer, neighbors traded theories about what was happening at the unusual, barricaded intersection near the hospital, with some describing bricks "coming loose" from the structure and safety coverings going up as a result. Estimates traded in that thread ranged wildly, from roughly two years to as long as three to five, underscoring how little official information had trickled out before now. Carilion's statement to the Rambler is the first time the health system has attached a firm completion date to the project.

Carilion's West Pavilion has drawn scrutiny before: in 2024, the health system spent an estimated $2 million repairing a separate downtown Carilion-owned tower after glass panels began falling from its facade (The Roanoke Times).

Why the hospital carries so much weight here

For all the frustration the closure has caused commuters, it's worth sizing up exactly what's inconveniencing them: Roanoke Memorial isn't just another building downtown. It's the anchor of the region's health care system and, by a wide margin, the largest employer in the Roanoke Valley, with more than 13,000 employees across the broader Carilion system and none of the region's other hospitals coming close. A Weldon Cooper Center study found Carilion generates more than $3.2 billion a year for Virginia's economy and supports nearly 24,000 jobs once vendor contracts and employee spending ripple outward — impact concentrated most heavily right here in the Roanoke Valley (Carilion Clinic; Carilion Clinic).

Roanoke Memorial itself is the region's only Level I trauma center and Level I pediatric trauma center, meaning the most severely injured patients from a service area of roughly 1.5 million people. stretching well beyond the Roanoke Valley into rural Southwest Virginia, are routed here for care that's available nowhere else nearby. As a nonprofit health system, Carilion also reported delivering more than $101 million in uncompensated care and $51.6 million toward training the region's future doctors and nurses in the most recent fiscal year for which figures are available, on top of nearly $8 million in direct community health investments (Carilion Clinic).

None of that makes the detours around Jefferson Street any shorter for the neighbors and patients dealing with them daily. But it helps explain why Carilion has been able to take a slow, deliberate approach to a brick repair project on one of its busiest buildings rather than rush it and why, for a region this dependent on the hospital, getting the work right likely matters more in the long run than getting it done fast. With Carilion now targeting a summer 2027 finish, the closure will have lasted roughly two full years by the time Belleview reopens. The Rambler will follow the story as more information becomes available.

Have information about the West Pavilion project or how the closure is affecting your commute to the hospital? Reach the Roanoke Rambler at editor@roanokerambler.com.