What our development really needs

So development here is happening at a break-neck pace. What’s so scary and disappointing is that many people have [bought] and are buying into the hype without thinking through the implications of development in our region. We’ve got serious infrastructure issues that beg the question, “Do we really want them to come?”

1. No economy. Aside from tourism and the supposedly largest sector, the medical industry, there’s not much more to it, except maybe all those nest-egg filled people who come spend all their money trying to open a business here that fails, and they have to move away—making way for the new crop. Instead of all those ads promoting Asheville [that] we run on Florida and California TV stations, how about we run real ads: “Asheville’s a great place to live if you already have lots of money, ‘cause you won’t make any here.” Or, “Come live in the mountains and drive for hours to get from one holler to the next. … We won’t cut any time from your commute, but the view is prettier … until that development goes up.”

2. Environmental and economic impact of building. Just because you have the money to build, doesn’t mean you should. There’s a downtown condo that was low-income housing and was turned into $385K-plus condos four years ago, following the footprint of the original 1912 building. Only seven [of] 14 condos have direct sunlight. Only seven of 14 condos have sold. Can you guess which ones haven’t? It is a travesty that we lost some of the last low-income housing in downtown Asheville for condos that no one wants to buy. … Our rules for development must enforce stricter standards to avoid unnecessary or wasteful development. My personal fear is that, after 10 years of loose overdevelopment, every mountainside will be covered like in Portland, Ore., with [mostly] million-dollar development blunders that will be empty and rotting on hillside after hillside. Hype is no excuse to build.

3. Transportation: Asheville’s Achilles heel. There is no realistic public transportation. Our time and our health are damaged by our lack of proaction. The roads get congested and smog from our individual transport vehicles fills the air in the hot summer. … The hype machine likes to spout how our visitor rate shot up in the weeks and months following 9/11. I wonder what the stats were during those weeks following the flood, when gas was over $3 a gallon. We need a train depot connected to a main route, and our lobbyists should be pushing for that. We need a light rail in the area. Our community needs to start the process of manifesting the infrastructures we need in order to create a thriving, insulated economy that allows individuals to get from one destination to another realistically. If we don’t come up with a viable mass-transit system, we may end up with plenty of people (thanks to development and the hype) with no way to go or come.