A groundbreaking ceremony for the city of Roanoke's boutique hotel and convention center was held on Oct. 7 with local elected officials, city staff and developers, where current Roanoke City Council members helped unveil the name for the boutique hotel.
The overview
The Cade Hotel will be located at 600 S. Oak St. and be part of the Curio Collection by Hilton. According to previous reporting, the hotel developer will lease land from the city and will operate the hotel and convention center, which will be owned by the city. The full-service hotel will also feature a restaurant.
The $97.5 million project is part of a public-private partnership, which includes a $62 million bond that voters approved for the project in the May 2025 election.
The city will get 6.25% of sales tax within 1,000 feet of the hotel and convention center to help pay for the project, Roanoke Mayor Carl E. “Scooter” Gierisch said.
What they’re saying
Gierisch said the city staff kept the name of the hotel a secret until they had solid ground to announce it.
The name is tied to the Cade Branch, a water source that is between US 377 and the railroad tracks, Gierisch said.
He added they looked for a name that really “popped” and was “short and sweet” to mirror other hotel projects such as The Drover in Fort Worth and Hotel Vin in Grapevine.
Steve Galbreath, the chief development officer for Garfield Private Public, said that list started with about 30 ideas. He said there have been 17 different companies involved in the design process for The Cade Hotel.
The background
Mayor Pro Tem Holly Gray has a vivid memory of a lunch meeting more than a decade ago of building a hotel near Roanoke City Hall.
Gray works for a civil engineering firm and said an architect popped into her office one day in 2016 and asked about Roanoke’s redevelopment downtown. She said at the time, the road work was underway on Oak Street and plans for the new Roanoke City Hall had been approved.
She expressed a desire for a boutique hotel. A week later, that architect helped set up a lunch meeting with Gray, then-City Manager Scott Campbell and representatives from the Peabody Hotel.
“We came back to the council and told them what a crazy idea this was,” she said. “And every one of them was like, ‘It is crazy, but let's do it.’ It's been up and down, obviously, since 2016. This morning, I was getting ready [and] was like, 'Is today really real?' I had to pinch myself because it's been a crazy ride, but I'm so excited.”
The partnership between the Peabody Hotel and city ended in 2024, according to previous reporting. However, the city opted to keep plans for a downtown Roanoke hotel open.
Quote of note
“Roanoke already has a strong identity, providing restaurant scenes, an authentic downtown and proximity to some of North Texas's most important corporate employment centers,” said Clint Woodlock, senior vice president of finances for Americas at Hilton. “This hotel will help strengthen those connections. It will give people a reason to stay in Roanoke, dine in Roanoke, hold their events in Roanoke and experience what makes this community distinct. Our goal is not to create a hotel that can be anywhere, it is to help create a hotel that belongs here. We're especially proud to partner with the city.”
What else?
Brasfield & Gorrie, a Dallas-based construction firm, was awarded a design-build agreement in May, according to previous reporting. Construction started on the project Aug. 24, city staff said.
