2 minute read
Spotlight FRONT’n About
Submitted
A touch of elegance in downtown Roanoke >
Advertisement
The French Farmhouse on Church Avenue in downtown Roanoke cut the ribbon recently. Owner Ashley Lawson offers her take on the home-decor marketplace. Perfect for gifts as well she says. Lawson also says her goal is to be budget friendly. Right next door the old Firehouse number one is being renovated as a retail space. Shoppers also wander in from the Hampton Inn next door. “Modern farmhouse, home décor, furniture and lighting,” is her description of what’s for sale, “it also has a French twist to it – a more elegant, farmhouse style.”
There’s even a section for kids and a space upstairs that can be rented for special events. Kitchen items, candle holders, pillows, furniture, mirrors and antiques (one-of-a-kind doors from different countries). Lawson says she has a big Instagram following for The French Farmhouse. “This is my taste to a T says Lawson, “there is nothing else in Roanoke like it. I want it to be very approachable.”
Gene Marrano
Future aviation employees? >
NEXTGEN Aviators is a division of Bridgewater-based Dynamic Aviation and is described as a 3-hour immersive experience designed to inspire middle and high school students to pursue a career in aviation – as a pilot, in avionics, ground maintenance/ support personnel or as an aerospace engineer. The program returned last month to the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport, to the Fixed Base Operator (FBO) facility behind the commercial passenger terminal, where those that fly small planes can find the services they need. More than 1000 6th, 8th and 10th graders from local school districts came through the NEXTGEN program over a three-day period - checking out private planes, trying their hand at CAD systems, and “flying” in cockpit simulators. Anthony Whitehead is the relations and engagement specialist: “the kids come out, they get introduced to a bit of engineering, they get to actually bend metal and rivet and walk away with something they’ve built.” Many also got to fly in a King Air jet, “many for the first time [in a plane],” Whitehead noted. “We hope that a certain amount [of students] will be turned on to aviation.”
