Embracing GIMBY — goodness in my backyard

BY ROBERT McGEE

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

— Henry David Thoreau

There’s a great line in the classic film Citizen Kane where Mr. Bernstein, Kane’s loyal servant and confidant, remarks, “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money — if all you want is to make a lot of money.” The same might be said about housing.

If the movers and shakers of our fair city really wanted to “make a lot of housing,” it would be pretty straightforward, so long as everyone in our community was willing to make sacrifices and commit to a bold and sweeping plan.

First, we’d do to Asheville what New York did to the island of Manhattan back in the 1800s: create a new, progressive vision for a growing city. In Asheville’s case, that means bulldozing all the pretty but inefficient architecture and starting over with renamed streets and a numerical grid. Mixed-use development would rule the day, and no buildings under eight (or 18!) stories would be allowed.

Once we had maximized vertical potential (and our tax base) downtown, we’d move outward, transforming all available space (and gratuitous blue sky) above the single-story buildings along Merrimon (Ave. M), Patton (Ave. P) and Tunnel (Ave. T) into housing for full-time residents working in-person jobs. Cops, teachers, caregivers and librarians would be given first dibs on digs above Ingles grocery stores, restaurants, bars, dry cleaners, wig shops, yogurt emporiums and eternal wastelands such as Stein Mart, Kmart and our many vacant Pits of Despair.

On the shores of Beaver Lake, we’d house the formerly unhoused in stackable tiny homes; on the lake itself, in tiny houseboats. Urban forests would be repurposed to provide tiny tree houses for poets. “Best to get those unemployable dreamers out of sight!” our mayor of the moment might declare.

Starting over

In short, this former Isolationist Burg would be transformed into a City of Vision. Our cash-strapped university would be dissolved, its campus repurposed as a walkable/bikeable Village of Youth offering abundant housing opportunities for reformed liberal arts types, so long as they agreed to ditch bookish fantasies and take up more useful trades like lawn care, plumbing, electrical work and the tending of tourists’ dogs.

Seely’s Castle, McCormick Field, the Governor’s Western Residence and other woefully underutilized structures would be replaced with multigenerational condos and a superfluity of “affordable” housing, whatever that might be.

Neighborhoods including but not limited to Lake View Park, Grove Park and Reynolds Mountain, where multitudes of retirees are rumored to pad about in echoey mansions searching for misplaced pickleballs, would be replaced with nifty fourplex People Pods near bike lanes and public transport corridors.

Tepees and trailers would be strapped to the roof of the Grove Arcade! Skinny Homes would be replaced by Skinny Towers! Obsolete city buses would find new lives as portable loos.

In time, Montford and Biltmore Estate would be returned to the descendants of our equitable city’s original inhabitants, once our many consultants and committees had somehow managed to agree on just how far back we should go — and who, exactly, those “original inhabitants” actually were.

Open space that’s currently hoarded and squandered by The Rich and The Dead would not be spared. That is, all golf courses and graveyards situated near city services — a precious commodity that now sits empty, silently mocking Regular Folk — would be plowed under on the principle of many roofs for many heads.

Even the few wooded acres I occupy (and plan to conserve) might be enlisted in the cause. I could see the property supporting perhaps a dozen eco-friendly huts, so long as any and all future inhabitants signed covenants agreeing not to smoke, vape, bang bongos, let barking dogs run wild, engage me in morning chatter or convert said honest structures into short-term rentals for boisterous bachelorettes.

Let’s get real

And to those of you who constantly clamor for more and more housing at any cost: Be honest. Isn’t there at least one of the harebrained notions laid out above that you would oppose? Even those who favor green burials can probably anticipate the wrath of a pitchfork-wielding NIGBY (Not In Granny’s Bone Yard) when I show up at Riverside Cemetery to bulldoze O. Henry away.

In this lovely place where we live and breathe, and where so many others apparently would give anything to do likewise, it seems to me that the more we try to become Asheville for All, the more likely it is that we’ll no longer be Asheville at all. In my view, we have it all wrong to allow quality of life to get screwed without pushing back. Must we lie still and take it while some shady Floridian takes a wrecking ball to our sunshine and makes off with our forests and streams?

Like many people living in harmonious communities that are under constant assault, I don’t object to more neighbors per se — as long as the proper roads, sidewalks, tree buffers and infrastructure are in place before the first tree is cut, the first scoop of dirt moved, and as long as horrific decisions aren’t rushed and/or driven by panic or greed.

I don’t believe that longtime residents who live on narrow lanes without sidewalks are NIMBYs simply because they don’t want an aggressor’s “mountain village” shoehorned in at the end of their dead-end street when the monstrous proposal doesn’t even meet the municipality’s stated criteria for such developments. But how many cans must be kicked down how many potholey roads before people see that those routes risk becoming too jammed to be safely traversed?

And to all ye shortsighted “leaders” intent on approving car-centric monstrosities with no safe way to reach them, I say, “Give us jet packs or give us death!”

Before the well runs dry

Residents of Haw Creek, South Slope, Richmond Hill and other established neighborhoods are wise to push for better, more thoughtful designs; more consideration for what and who is here now; more overall goodness in all of our backyards. Development can have irreversible long-term impacts on what is most people’s major life investment, on our families, our physical and mental well-being, on life itself. Residents aren’t NIMBYs if they strive for the best, pleasantest and safest communities they can create: They’re fools if they don’t.

So as we continue to make room for newcomers who may or may not turn out to be wonderful neighbors and friends, let’s remember to be thoughtful toward the neighbors and friends we have now. In civilized society, the peaceful enjoyment of one’s home is (or should be) the most valued commodity and widely held concern. And in our eagerness to satisfy the thundering cries to build more and more crap faster and faster to accommodate countless theoretical futures, let’s not be in such a rush to wipe out our goodness and destroy this wondrous place we call Home.

Robert McGee lives near some of the oldest oak trees in Asheville. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Sun magazine, The Christian Science Monitor and other publications.