Don Petersen | Special to The Roanoke Times
The former Villa Sorrento restaurant building on Patterson Avenue in Roanoke's West End neighborhood is demolished Friday to make way for a credit union. Wall murals from the popular restaurant are seen in the foreground. Demolition work is scheduled to continue today and Monday.
The blues of a Mediterranean shore and red roofs of Italian cities were exposed for the last time Friday as Randy Kingery swung his backhoe around for another bite out of what was once the Villa Sorrento restaurant.
"They had the best Italian food in Roanoke," he said. "My favorite was the lasagna. It was the best I ever had."
Kingery will finish tearing down the concrete block additions to the 1890s-era home that housed the popular restaurant today. He'll demolish the house itself Monday.
"That's good, solid brick there. You want to take that down carefully," he said.
The former restaurant is coming down to make way for something that may be just about as distinctive as the old Villa Sorrento - a full-service credit union branch in a neighborhood that's the target for a major revitalization effort.
When Freedom First opens the new branch next to West End Center, probably in the first quarter of next year, it hopes to help anchor that revitalization, said Dave Prosser, Freedom First's vice president of community development.
In part, that could be by offering a less costly way for its new neighbors to pay their bills or cash their paychecks than the money orders or check cashers that many now use.
The credit union also hopes to help finance the affordable housing and cars that many in the community need, he said.
Freedom First made $2.7 million of affordable housing loans last year, Prosser said, often to people shunned by banks because of their income or credit records.
The credit union has a car loan program to help people buy well-maintained used vehicles from a rental car company. The typical borrower for that program is a single mother, with a median income of $17,500, who might otherwise be unable to afford anything but a clunker by taking on a high-interest rate loan, Prosser said.
"We try to look for people who are on the upswing," he said. Lending to people who are trying hard is good business, he added.
West End Center Executive Director Joy Parrish said she thinks the Freedom First branch will mark an upswing for the whole community.
She's looking to set up a community kitchen in the new building, hoping it will become a place where people can build food-based businesses, a kind of incubator that will create jobs and income for community residents.
"There's just a lot of positive energy in this community now," she said. It marks a change from the shuttering in recent years of West End businesses such as Villa Sorrento.
Villa Sorrento closed in 2000, making way for an expansion of West End Center. Opened in 1959, it was known for its murals of market squares, moonlit gardens and Italian cities, as well as the way owners Joseph and Rose Provenzano encouraged parents to bring their toddlers with them, and Chianti-fueled chatter deep into the evening. The restaurant reopened on Williamson Road in 2001, but closed for good in 2004.
"I loved the manicotti," Parrish said. "And the pizza was the best there was."
Source: http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/318952
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