How to Get Married 101

Around the world and across time, the wedding rite has taken on well-deserved rep for being stressful, beleaguering and even brutal. It seems like there has been no shortage of those who will plan, build and jump all sorts of hurdles, just to sate their desire to be together. Fortunately, in our little neck of […]

Askville: On guard

Last December, the city of Asheville announced that it had hired a ranger for Pritchard Park. The strategically sited downtown park has been the focus of disputes concerning everything from homelessness and free breakfasts to drum circles (not to mention the occasional protest-sign-wielding polar bear), and the news traveled fast. Some in the community saw […]

Halftime

It’s a little more than two years since Terry Bellamy moved from an Asheville City Council seat to the mayor’s chair after besting fellow Council member Joe Dunn in a run for the city’s top job. The victory made the 33-year-old Asheville native the city’s first black mayor—and the youngest mayor then serving in the […]

Hopeful signs?

Staples displayed the proposed design changes for its Merrimon Avenue façade in a Jan. 28 press conference called by company executives and Mayor Terry Bellamy. Both camps aim to settle another festering issue in the long-running and often acrimonious debate about the city’s interpretation and enforcement of the Unified Development Ordinance. Staples and Greenlife Grocery […]

More power to you

Driving out the Leicester Highway from Patton Avenue, it narrows from five lanes to two, and the strip malls and fast-food joints give way to old-school mechanics and busted-up portable signs. Later on, that same highway continues up the mountains and around sharp curves into miles of old farmland that eventually lead up to Sandy […]

Asheville City Council

Created in 2001 to encourage high-density, mixed-use development, the “urban village” zoning designation is still experiencing growing pains. In 2006, City Council raised the maximum allowable height of buildings in such districts from 80 feet to 150 feet. The change came after Biltmore Farms pleaded its case for a 12-story hotel at its Biltmore Park […]