Letter: Hoping that Asheville isn’t ‘sold out’

Graphic by Lori Deaton

I hope Asheville is not sold out [“Asheville Is ‘Sold Out,’” June 2, Xpress]. I have been planning to move there from Charlotte for over 10 years. I love the area, and there is a great deal of room, just not necessarily “in Asheville,” but all surrounding areas.

I have done a lot of scoping from all four sides of Asheville and can say that the side toward Hendersonville is getting full, as well as the side going toward Swannanoa. The side toward Weaverville and the side toward Canton have a lot of growth to go.

But ask me again in 10-15 years, and maybe it may be all full. You also need to count population attrition and turnover due to advancing age.

In any event, you live in God’s country and should not screw it up by being Adam and Eve. You know what happened to them.

— Gil Borrero
Charlotte

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12 thoughts on “Letter: Hoping that Asheville isn’t ‘sold out’

  1. NFB

    “I have done a lot of scoping from all four sides of Asheville and can say that the side toward Hendersonville is getting full, as well as the side going toward Swannanoa. ”

    The Hendersonville side and the Swannanoa side are “getting full” because people did what the letter writer wants to do….move here.

    So, the letter writer wants to contribute to the problem he is concerned about.

    • Lou

      Which would not be as much of a problem if the city and county actually spent their piece of the pie on things like road improvement, sidewalks, affordable housing, and traffic control (as in what is up with the increasingly moronic drivers doing 90 mph on I-40 without nary a sheriff’s car in sight?) and perhaps some mental health support for the huge number of perhaps otherwise capable homeless individuals? Oh no, they prefer breweries and manufacturers of parts for warplanes, some of which are currently used as killing machines committing mass murder on and around the Gaza strip. Seriously, I was one of the weirdos who moved here from Sylva seven years ago with such naivete and now I understand that 25 years ago, when I escaped to NC from Florida, I thought Raleigh was the best spot in which to land in this embarrassingly red(neck) state after visiting Charlotte, Asheville, and Raleigh. I should have followed that first instinct. This town is a huge, overpriced, romanticized mess.

  2. luther blissett

    “The Hendersonville side and the Swannanoa side are “getting full” because people did what the letter writer wants to do….move here.”

    Or, y’know, people have children who want to live near their parents. At some point, the anti-growth people are really arguing for grandchildren to smother mee-maw and paw-paw in their beds once they’re old enough to move out.

    • NFB

      Well, my point was that in my experience the biggest anti-growth people here are people who have moved here.

      Of late there seems to be an especially high number of letters to MX (and ACT for that matter) from people who have moved here who are complaining about other people doing the exact same thing.

      But as for smothering mee-maw and paw-paw, the mere idea of wanting to live within a thousand mile radius of one’s parents is an anathema in our hyper individualist obsessed culture so forget about that being an excuse to movie here.

      • luther blissett

        Oh, for sure, and I wasn’t meaning to snark at you, just wanted to note that the most basic reason for population growth is “more people are born than die.”

      • aaaaaa

        I’m a transplant too (30 years in the area), and I am somewhat anti-growth…….but it isn’t so much the number of people moving here, but why they are moving here. People who used to move to the area wanted to be part of a really cool community that had been created. There are still people who move here that want to be part of that and contribute, but since the creation of the TDA, there seems to be many who come here for what they can take out as opposed to what they put in…..more exploitation of this community for selfish purposes and money than participating to make it a better place. Remember that Bele Chere used to focus a lot on local musicians, then it switched over to national acts that would draw tourists? It just seems like so much that is done now, is done for the tourist dollars that can be brought in and the residents don’t matter, though the residents are who made this such a wonderful area to live

  3. Bright

    The wannabe “city” of Asheville needs to check out the cities that are well thought of and prospering…check them out, and regard the top-notch hospitals that THEY boast! Also, read the Express letter from one of the many unfortunate people who have had a lousy experience at Mission Hospital in Asheville. You wanna be? You have to have quality…look it up.

  4. Taxpayer

    Asheville can only be as good as the people elected to run it. Or ruin it.

  5. xeno

    They should rename asheville Xenophobiaville. This newspaper can be called MountainXenophobpress, catering to people who claim they were here back in the day but probably werent as cool as they remember.

    • aaaaaa

      I posted this in reply to another comment, but I think it is relevant to what you have said.

      I’m a transplant too (30 years in the area), and I am somewhat anti-growth…….but it isn’t so much the number of people moving here, but why they are moving here. People who used to move to the area wanted to be part of a really cool community that had been created. There are still people who move here that want to be part of that and contribute, but since the creation of the TDA, there seems to be many who come here for what they can take out as opposed to what they put in…..more exploitation of this community for selfish purposes and money than participating to make it a better place. Remember that Bele Chere used to focus a lot on local musicians, then it switched over to national acts that would draw tourists? It just seems like so much that is done now, is done for the tourist dollars that can be brought in and the residents don’t matter, though the residents are who made this such a wonderful area to live

  6. Ken

    People are going to move here no matter whether we put up a “Sold Out” sign or not. We need to get used to that… populations increase organically, or by attrition. It’s not something we can, or want to prevent. This is actually a “good problem” to have… it’s better than having a city and population that are aging/dying, and people are leaving for better opportunities elsewhere.

    The problem we need to solve, and question we should be asking is not, “How do we stop people from moving here?”, it’s “People are moving here. How do we want to respond?” and “How do we want this place to look in 10-15 years after those thousands of people have moved here?”.

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