Today, I want to use this space to call for an end to the factors stymieing the future of the Roanoke City Market Building.

Most everyone agrees that downtown's signature marketplace building needs a serious makeover. But the suspicions and the inability to communicate between the people running the building and those making their living in it have stalled the renovation.

A report submitted to the Roanoke Valley Development Foundation and the Roanoke Valley Development Corp. was leaked last week.

The document kicked off the usual buzz that should remind everyone how all of the parties with a direct interest need to make an earnest effort to come to the table.

Before talk of restoring the building gets too far along, city officials, economic development types and vendors need to candidly discuss what the future of the building should be -- and any concerns.

Until that happens, the 85-year-old structure that the report described as "an iconic building and place in the city" will remain a rundown icon stalled in debate.

The report, written by the nonprofit group Project for Public Spaces, urged changes in the use and design of the building. The changes included restoring the third-floor ballroom, removing most of the mezzanine and new locations for food-court vendors.

The vendors agree that the market building needs refurbishing, but they remain wary of how any construction might affect them. Their ambivalence is understandable.

In recent years, the building has been the source of worry. Out-of-town management. Unhappy tenants. A debate over whether Subway belonged in the food court.

They've endured the city's piecemeal approach toward the building rather than a comprehensive strategy for making it the showcase it can be. The city paid $100,000 for an earlier report addressing the market as an integral part of downtown. Nothing has come of it.

But the vendors need to realize that if their workplace is to ever improve, they have to move beyond their caution and distrust, and work with the other parties to make sure their worries are addressed.

And the officials have to listen, to take the vendors' concerns seriously and invite their input in any discussions of the building's future. A project as crucial to downtown should not be caught up in a swirl of speculation and secondhand accounts but a forthright discussion, based on fact.

If a renovated market building is to ever become reality, no party will completely get its way. That's compromise.

But to reach that point, all parties must bury the hatchet -- along with the distrust.

Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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