The town's $1-a-year storefront is taking applications, Eheart Street is getting a better bike route, Local Lore: Pandapas Pond started as one man's gift to his employees

Downtown Blacksburg Inc. is accepting its first tenants for The Local @ 414 — five retail stalls and five wall display spaces in the old Cook's Cleaners building, with rents starting at $200 a month.

The town bought the building about a decade ago and put pandemic relief money into the renovation. Council approved DBI's lease unanimously — $1 a year for five years. The space runs 5,000 square feet and includes a café and event space alongside the stalls. Startups pay $200–$350 a month; established businesses pay $500. Soft launch is September, grand opening in October.

Links: Town announcement · downtownblacksburg.com/414 · Cardinal News

If you drive Eheart Street, you already know it went one-way for cars a few months back, and you may have wondered what all of it was for.

Here's the answer. Paving is done and striping is underway on a two-way cycle track — a bike lane separated from traffic — running from Willard Drive to the Huckleberry Trail. The town expects to open it soon. There's even a dedicated bicycle signal phase at Main Street so riders can cross without playing chicken with turning cars.

Right now there's no continuous, protected way to make that trip. You either take the lane on Main Street with the buses and the Friday night traffic, or you stitch together sidewalks and side streets and hope. After this, it's one ride.

Check out the town project page at letstalkblacksburg.org/eheart-street-cycle-track

Here’s a great profile you might not have seen before from NRV Magazine back in 2017. Did you know that James Pandapas — founder of Electro-Tec, later Poly-Scientific — bought a 500-acre tract called Poverty Valley in 1948, dammed Poverty Creek, and built a private recreation area for the people who worked for him. He called it Pan Villa. Someone else started calling it Pandapas Pond and the name stuck. In the 1960s, after Pandapas sold the Poly Scientific business, he opened the park to the public. It became a popular place for all-night drinking parties with copious beer cans and trash left behind. “I had to send a truck to pick up the beer cans and trash [every Monday morning],” he said in a 1993 interview. “I had no interest in policing it.” In 1983 he sold the whole thing to the U.S. Forest Service for exactly what it had cost him in 1948, plus what he'd spent on the pond and the roads.

For more information on Pandapas Pond and the surrounding area check out: https://yesmontgomeryva.org/living/outdoor-amenities/pandapas-pond-recreation-area.

Facts about Pandapas:

💧 8-acre man-made pond · elevation ~2,200 ft

♿ 1-mile accessible loop, pedestrians only, with a wetland boardwalk

🚵 Poverty Creek Trail System — roughly 20 miles

🎣 Stocked with trout October through May

🏅 The only federal day-use recreation area in Montgomery County

Links: NRV Magazine profile · Virginia DWR