For those who didn’t live in Asheville in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, the image of a dead, boarded-up downtown may seem abstract. For a tour of downtown’s history from those days to the bustling present, check out this report [PDF file, 5.2MB] by the Asheville Downtown Commission, to be presented to City Council at its April 10 meeting.
The 60-page slideshow concludes with an initiative to form a new downtown master plan, but begins with a selection of historic photographs that show a very different downtown.
The entire agenda for City Council’s next meeting, which takes place at 5 p.m. at City Hall, is available here.
— Brian Postelle, staff writer
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Asheville planners beware you are creating “anywhere USA” right here in the mountains. Having been born and raised in Asheville for 50 years and actually make a living outside the tourism, real estate or hospital communities, it’s becoming clear that city council and new money (Controlling Powers) can be very short sighted. Our journey to a new revitalized downtown (2 million dollar condo city) looks like this: The cunning real estate gang put pressure on city council to clean it up – let’s get rid of the “fringe element” and all that unnecessary diversity. The real estate brilliance also starts raising storefront rent and leases on that unsightly Lexington Avenue “have you seen those tangle heads”. Controlling Powers start to drive out the music scene – people don’t’ come to town to “Panic” they come for our 2 million condos. The city powers build fear of “urban terrorism” by cracking down on non-gang related graffiti and dispersing social clusters of non-designer label visitors “can’t get 2mil when there’s drumming outside the window”. Meanwhile the artists leave town taking their art, the musicians leave town taking their music, the wonderful restaurants follow because they need the tourist coming to town to see the art and music and that weird “ fringe element” on Lexington “did you see that twisty head dear”. So Asheville city planners you are left with a pale retired community in 2 million condos literally dying for a good restaurant. They leave too because there is nothing to do except walk the dog. “Honey we should have never left Boca this place looks just like Charlotte or for that matter anywhere USA and what happened to the beautiful mountains?” The real estate people don’t care because they made their short term money.
City planners there is a lot more to quality of life than money. Quality of life is a balance, you let one group take over and you destroy the balance and diversity. I have a friend with a business downtown who said that one of her newly transplanted female clients actually said “I don’t like living downtown because it’s too diverse”. Is this really the type of people we want?? Is diversity and quality of life what we want or not, it can quickly fade. Like it or not Asheville has attracted a tolerant crowd for a while (review the history from the 1890’s , 1920’s and 30’s) that history and those liberated thinkers are what makes Asheville a place to live and visit. When you make decisions for the city think hard, no think harder, think about cause and effect, think about the story “The goose and the golden egg”. I have a young acquaintance, who just moved to Asheville, she said that she always wanted to LIVE in Asheville. She is sorry she missed it. Anytown here we come!
Just in case you missed the gist of this friendly rant — if we clean the city up too much there will not be anything special about it. Nothing special – why come? Maybe that is what we want? Downtown folk the time has come to make a conscious decision. What do YOU really want to happen?