Press release from the City of Asheville:
The City of Asheville will host an open house to introduce a new planning project for the downtown Patton Avenue Corridor. This study will create a long-term vision for the area of Patton Avenue that runs from the Jeff Bowen Bridge to its endpoint at Pack Square Plaza.
What: Patton Avenue Corridor Feasibility Study Public Open House
When: Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Where: Harrah’s Cherokee Center Banquet Hall, 87 Haywood Street, Asheville
The study, primarily funded with federal dollars, will develop transportation, land use, and urban design recommendations for this important downtown thoroughfare.
The public is invited to drop in between 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 29 to view project boards and provide input on priorities and concerns with the project team, which includes a variety of City staff and consultants from McAdams.
Feedback received will be used to inform recommendations that will create a successful vision for a gateway to Downtown and connections to adjacent neighborhoods and the River Arts District.
The planning study will take approximately one year and will be reviewed regularly by a Project Working Group composed of community members from various backgrounds.
To learn more, visit the project website at www.ashevillenc.gov/patton
Oh please… Enough already! Has there ever been a city with so much effort going into “visioning,” with so little to show for it?
How many years of visioning, and how many hours of volunteer time, went into planning for the Pit of Despair – which still sits, as depressing, barren and useless today as it did more than 10 years ago when the city acquired the property?
And how about the visioning for the South Slope, which after years of dithering and delay, finally produced a “draft plan,” only to have it, again, “indefinitely delayed” before the draft even got widely circulated? In the meantime, the Council has approved project after project for the South Slope, which undermines the whole goal of any kind of rational planning for the district as a whole. Among such decisions was the absurd one allowing for a large outdoor concert venue right in the center of what has already become “the Brewery District,” and which seems to be on track to become the most densely populated residential area in downtown Asheville — all approved with no vision plan.
Speaking of issues related to the concert venue – that years long visioning process for the new noise ordinance certainly paid off. Thousands of volunteer hours went into crafting recommendations, only to have the Council enact something which bore little resemblance to what was proposed, with endless variances, and no functional enforcement mechanism. The result? During a time when Asheville’s noise problems have become more and more obvious to everyone, not a single noise citation has been issued since the new ordinance went into effect (https://avlwatchdog.org/answer-man-are-asheville-noise-violators-actually-charged-duke-energys-local-solar-farm-on-track/)
Also, lets not forget how smoothly the visioning and follow through on removing the Vance Monument, and deciding what should replace it has gone. Whether one supported that action or not, after more than 2 1/2 years since that decision was made, the city is still tied up in lawsuits over whether the monument can even be removed.
One could go on… The Business Improvement District, which the council approved more than 10 years ago, and then promptly refused to allow it to go forward, prompting one prominent volunteer to say, “Six years of effort that was all pissed away.” It’s a proposal which is now being revisited by some who either have short memories, or who didn’t live here when it was first considered. I suppose now we should expect more years of, “re-envisioning the original vision.”
Reparations? The patterns there seem identical to the other examples. Thousands of hours devoted by volunteers, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on consultants, recommendations which are not rooted in the realities of budgets and governing, indecision by the Council, and after years of spinning wheels, nothing to show for it.
The wisdom of the ages still eludes those in positions of authority…
Jer. 5:21: “Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.”
“There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.” John Heywood (1546).