By the late ‘80s, Asheville was beginning to realize that it had a potential gold mine in the hundreds of undertaxed properties sitting in the historic district mere blocks from the slowly awakening downtown. All the city had to do was upgrade the neighborhood infrastructure—a legal activity that caused the property owners in Montford almost […]
Tag: Rick Vogel
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Montford memories I
It wasn’t until the new neighbor showed up on our front porch and announced that he was starting a fledgling bookie operation in the basement of his place across the street that we realized we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. He said he intended to run a quiet operation and hoped we would not be […]
Dinner memories
Welcome to the Asheville of the early ‘80s—a period when restaurant development would play an important role in bolstering the emergence of downtown as a recreational and entertainment destination. Two key events in 1979 undoubtedly fueled the incipient stirrings of social activity in downtown Asheville: the launch of the Bele Chere festival, now a downtown […]
Lost and found
After many years of visiting from New Orleans, we arrived in Asheville in September of 1981, finally ready to make it our home. Once again we were struck by the skeletal remains of a once-vibrant city now barely connected to its illustrious past, except for a mishmash of glorious but unkempt early-20th-century architecture. But even […]