Roseboro comes alive

ROSEBORO — It was a rocking and grooving time this past Friday in downtown as officials, residents, business owners and visitors joined together to enjoy another aLive in the Boro concert which also served to debut the town’s new stage.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight to celebrate our town’s newest gathering place, our stage, The Roseboro Common,” Mayor Alice Butler said during the opening ceremony. “Just three months ago, many of us were standing in this very same place for the groundbreaking of this stage, and now, just three months later, we not only have a beautiful stage, but the area is landscaped and has a new parking lot. Needless to say, a lot of people have been extremely busy.”

That groundbreaking was in June and as of Sept. 20 the build has been complete with the stage being located on 103 NW Railroad St. While the purpose of the stage is to be a new hot spot for the town to host events, Butler said it was the very event they held that night which brought the project to life.

“In 2022, Robby James (owner of James Trading Co.), who is constantly looking for ways to make downtown Roseboro a destination to create community engagement, wanted to start a concert series,” she said. “Robby, Tyler Wise, Randy Kelly and several other supporters began brainstorming and came up with aLive in the Boro.”

It would be the continued growth and success of that concert series that became the catalyst for the stage, a place the town could use for concerts as well as other events.

“While aLive in the Boro has been very successful and demonstrates the love and diversity we enjoy here in Roseboro,” Butler said, “we all knew we needed to create a better space for this series. “So we began to reach out to our partners at both the state and the local level. Not very long ago, just 11 months, Liz Parham, the state director of North Carolina Main Street and Rural Planning Center, invited Dan Lambert, a landscape architect with McAdams Company, to help us with our vision for downtown.

“One of his suggestions was for a stage and common area that could be used for events like aLive in the Boro, Bloomfest, the Christmas tree lighting, and to just have a community gathering area.”

Once the idea for a stage was set in motion, it quickly garnered the support, and the funds, needed to make it a reality.

“Tyler Wise, our North Carolina Lead Fellow at that time, was participating in a rural community capacity training and shared with us a grant possibility,” Butler said. “We applied for the grant and, in December of last year, we were awarded $49,999 for the construction of a stage. We quickly learned that we needed matching dollars in order to complete the stage ,so Tyler then submitted an application for a local grant with the Sampson County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“Their board awarded us $50,000 in addition to $49,999. With the funds in place and our architectural drawings approved, Carr Construction Group began construction in late July and completed this beautiful stage just a couple weeks ago. And I’ll tell you, it was fun watching all the people walk up and down and drive up and down and see the progress every day.”

Now complete, the stage also has built-in space for a dance floor. Donated by Wells Fargo, the project also includes sitting areas, with benches and umbrellas, that line both sides of the stage area.

Friday night, the town enjoyed its first-ever live performance on the stage with a trip through the classics of Motown, Oldies and Beach music from Thief of Hearts Entertainment.

“A special thank you goes to Robby James, who voluntarily oversaw the stage project, Bill Poole, our public works director, and his staff, with the help of Arnold and Ben Sandy, who constructed our parking lot in record time, even with all the rain, and, of course, a special thank you to all our sponsors” Butler attested. “As you can tell, we have a vision for our town, and we’re taking the needed steps to make it a reality.

“At the groundbreaking, I quoted Colin Powell, who says, ‘a dream doesn’t become reality without magic. It takes sweat, determination and hard work.’ I can assure you, a lot of sweat determination and hard work have happened so we can be here today celebrating.

“We certainly hope The Roseboro Common will be enjoyed for many years by the community and also those who hike our Roseboro Heritage Trail, the Mountain to Sea Trail and beyond.”