Bill Miles, board president of The Performance Center in Asheville, was standing on a Grove Arcade balcony outside the offices of architects Calloway, Johnson, Moore and West on November 12, having just announced that the firm would be joining Boston-based William Rawn Associates in crafting a master plan for the long-discussed center.
"We do think we got the cream of the crop," said Miles, whose group was founded in 2004 in response to widely leveled complaints that Thomas Wolfe Auditorium is ill-suited to put on stage productions and symphony performances.
The organization announced in 2007 that it was seeking to build public interest in the project, which it estimated would cost roughly $85 million. Then in 2008, Asheville City Council supported its proposal to locate the center on city-owned property on Market Street just south of Asheville City Hall.
The organization appears to have remained in the good graces of local government. Both Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy and Buncombe County Board of Commissioners Chair David Gantt showed up to offer words of encouragement at the announcement.
The group explained that it would be launching an effort to have a master plan for the project completed by the end of 2010. Early in the year it will begin to host community meetings that will determine what sort of features should be included. This time the group is giving no cost estimate; Executive Director James Baudoin says a budget won't be drawn up until the master-plan design is underway.
While Rawn Associates will be the lead design firm, CJM&W will work to make sure the project is a good fit for Asheville, explained architect Alan McGuinn. McGuinn knows a thing or two about building community consensus. He helped shepherd the design of the Interstate 26 connector alternative 4B with the Asheville Design Center. "This is a legacy project," he said. "We need to have a conversation with the community to get an understanding of what the role of a performing arts center should be."
It is generally anticipated that the building will be a multipurpose and mixed-use facility that will create foot traffic even when performances aren't being held. And it is hoped that the center will draw more economic activity to the Eagle/Market street area. For regularly updated information on the effort, go to http://www.theperformancecenter.org.
Fire investigators last week continued to probe a Monday, Nov. 9, explosion and ensuing blaze that gutted a Hillcrest Apartments building of six units. They believe it was intentionally set.
Investigators determined early on that the fire, which started about 11:30 a.m., was stoked by natural gas. Later in the week, they announced that the blaze was arson.
"We did find that the release of natural gas was intentional," Asheville Fire Chief Scott Burnette told Xpress. "There was also a separate fire set elsewhere in the apartment."
When the natural gas encountered the fire, it caused the explosion and blaze that roared through the building that was home to six different apartments housing 22 people. Burnette declined to discuss how the natural gas was released. The investigation includes members of the Asheville Police Department, the Asheville-Buncombe Arson Task Force and agents from the N.C. State Bureau of Investigations, as well as the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
No one was seriously injured in the fire. An Asheville Housing Authority maintenance man, who was in one of the units next door to the apartment where the fire started, injured his ankle after jumping out of a second-floor window to escape. Sharon Fox, who lived in the apartment at the opposite end of the building, said she was washing dishes when she heard the explosion.
"It freaked me out," a shaken Fox said at the scene. "I ran out the back door and I could see gutters, pieces of the building flying. The whole building just collapsed on that end."
Just after the blaze, Angel Matthews, who lived in the apartment where it first broke out, told Xpress that she suspected her former boyfriend Carl Vincent Jones Sr. had set the fire. The morning of the fire, Matthews was at the Buncombe County Courthouse getting a temporary restraining order against Jones, who was subsequently arrested on charges of breaking into her apartment on Nov. 7. A judge issued the restraining order after Matthews said Jones had threatened to kill her.
Sixteen of the residents of the building were in temporary housing last week. Anyone with information about the arson is invited to contact Crime Stoppers at 255-5050.
The $3.1 million renovation to the beating heart of Buncombe County's library system — Pack Memorial Library — is speeding along ahead of schedule.
On a recent tour of the work underway at 67 Haywood Street in downtown Asheville, Ed Sheary, director of the Buncombe County Public Libraries system, says that once it's complete, the renovation will improve the 31-year-old library's service, boost the building's energy efficiency and improve several public spaces, including Lord Auditorium and the children's area. Public restrooms will be added, and the library's North Carolina Collection will get room to grow.
"The scope of this is to get another 20 years out of this building," Sheary says. "All of its systems will be new."
The library system, which includes Pack and 12 other libraries, circulates about 1.5 million items a year, Sheary says. It opened in November 1978 and was once the site of a showroom for Harry's Cadillac dealership.
Buncombe County commissioners earlier this year approved the project and awarded the work to low-bidder Charlotte-based Gleeson Snyder construction. The awarding of the bid to an out-of town firm rankled Commissioner Bill Stanley, who voted against it. But commissioners said that under state law, they were required to accept the lowest reasonable bid, which beat out Asheville-based Goforth Builders and Perry Bartsch Jr. Construction Co.
Sheary says that the project, which started about a month ago, is moving faster than anticipated. The original construction schedule called for the library to be closed for nine to 10 months. It's now looking like a six- to nine-month job, Sheary says, with the library shutting its doors in January for the work, although that's not set in stone. The building will reopen in phases.
The library's ground floor is already gutted. The floor will feature an expanded children's area and more glass walls to improve the look and safety of the floor. Lord Auditorium, already stripped down, will be reoriented to move the stage to the opposite end of the room. That will improve traffic flow into the auditorium, says Sheary, noting that the old orientation had the main entrance to the auditorium right next to the stage.
There will be some changes to the main floor of the library and its book stacks, but they won't be radical, says Sheary. The stacks will be moved slightly closer together, and they'll run perpendicular to the length of the floor rather than parallel to it. The main desk and reference desk will be combined. The public's access to computers with Internet connectivity will improve with a total of about 22 computers made available to users. And the North Carolina Collection, now situated on the main floor, will be moved to the ground floor and into a large space with its own heating and cooling system to better protect the materials, Sheary says.
New heating and cooling systems, new ductwork and new lighting will dramatically improve the building's energy efficiency, according to Sheary. The renovations, which also include a small ground-floor expansion and the addition of a fire-escape tower, will increase the building's square footage from 52,000 to about 65,000, Sheary says.
With the library's main floor closing next year, Sheary says the library is looking for another downtown space to continue to offer services to library users. Some staff members and computers will be moved out to branch libraries to beef up services there.
During the two years it took to draw up the Downtown Master Plan, adopted by Asheville City Council in May, skeptics frequently invoked the specter of other city plans gathering dust on some literal or figurative shelf. That, says project manager Sasha Vrtunski, will not be the fate of the DMP.
"We don't want to hear that ever about this plan, that it sat on a shelf," she said on Monday, Nov. 9, at the first meeting of the Downtown Master Plan Action Committee. The committee, which met in the meeting room on the ground floor of the Asheville Art Museum, is charged with monitoring the implementation of recommendations made in the draft plan. Its 50 or so members have been divided into five subcommittees that will focus on urban design, transportation, historic preservation, arts and culture, and downtown management.
Many of them were involved with developing the DMP in some way. Some served on the Downtown Master Plan Advisory Committee or on other city boards and commissions. Others are property or business owners or stakeholders in the city's arts community. A few were frequent critics of the direction parts of the plan were taking.
"What has come out of this process is going to be a great framework for developers to use," said committee chair Jesse Plaster, who also serves on the Downtown Commission.
Much time was spent with personal introductions and with establishing subcommittee meeting times. The frequency of meetings will depend on each topic, Vrtunski said. For instance, urban design issues are expected to come up quickly, and that subcommittee has already begun to meet.
Vrtunski also outlined subcommittee responsibilities and the chain of command: the subcommittees report to the larger action committee, which reports to the Downtown Commission, which makes recommendations to Asheville City Council for a final vote.
Committee members were urged to stick to the draft plan recommendations and resist the temptation to insert their own policies. "It's going to be very easy for us to take off in different directions," said restaurateur Dwight Butner. "But that is not what we are here to do."
In a rain-drenched, somber ceremony, a group of about 300 people gathered at Pack Square Park on Veterans Day to dedicate the new Western North Carolina Veterans' Memorial. Darlene and George Houghton of Candler participated in a wreath-laying at the memorial, which honored their son, Capt. George Bryan Houghton, a 22-year-old pilot who died in June when his jet crashed during a training mission in Utah. The keynote speaker was WNC native Brig. Gen. Katherine Kasun, deputy commander for the U.S. Army's Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command at Fort Bragg. Kasun was the first female graduate of Western Carolina University's ROTC program. She filled in for Maj. Gen. David Blackledge, who traveled to Fort Hood Texas to support troops there after an on-base shooting left 13 people dead. The new memorial in the downtown park was 12 years in the making and cost $450,000, which was raised by a memorial board of directors that included chairman Richard Griffin, Albert "Tuck" Gudger and others. Artist Jodi Jubran, a sculptor at East Carolina University, created the monument main work — a seated woman in bronze sitting on a granite bench with letters to the "homeland" on her lap. Jubran said she was inspired by her own mother. She felt it was fitting to have a mother figure as the central point of a memorial honoring the service of all veterans "because we all have mothers."
The leak stops here: It was a day many feared might never come. A new Asheville Civic Center roof is under construction, replacing an old roof notorious for dripping water during performances. The new roof will be white, intended to reflect heat from sunlight and reduce cooling costs. Added insulation is expected to further reduce energy use at the facility. The $1.5 million replacement, approved by Asheville City Council in July, is expected to be finished early next year.
In the Nov. 3 municipal election, Asheville City Council member Robin Cape received 4,478 write-in votes, according to figures from Buncombe County Election Services. While Cape's bid for a second term was serious, many write-in voters were not. (Squirt the Wonder Clam, really?)
Cape, who changed her mind and decided to run for a second term after the filing deadline, passed out pencils and ran a vigorous campaign but was ultimately unsuccessful, coming in fifth place. Cape got the lion's share of the 4,627 total write-in votes.
The remaining 149 are a mixed bag, to put it politely. On the more serious side, former City Council member (and current county commissioner) Holly Jones got 18 write-in votes for her old seat, while current Council member Kelly Miller, who stepped out of the race before the general election, got 12.
On the mayoral side, Cape also led the write-in field with 23 votes, followed by Shad Marsh (who ran in the primary) with 18, Asheville Design Center planner Joe Minicozzi with 12, Council member Carl Mumpower with 11 and former Council member Joe Dunn with five.
Then there's Squirt the Wonder Clam, who was joined by the illustrious (Christopher Walken, Ferris Bueller, Big Bird, Mickey Mouse), the criminal (DB Cooper, Charles Manson), the dissatisfied ("None of the Above," "Anybody Else"), the parental ("Your Mom") and, of course, the perennial political favorite Satan, who could not be reached for comment.
Asheville media types got some electoral love as well, with votes for the Ashvegas blog, long-time Xpress contributor and editor Nelda Holder and WCQS mainstay David Hurand. UNCA political professor William Sabo also got a nod. Better luck next election, everyone.
