Poisoned fruit

Developer Stewart Coleman apparently thinks to use a legal loophole to do an end run around public and City Council opposition to his proposed Parkside condos adjacent to City Hall. Here’s what’s wrong with this picture: Aside from the litany of serious problems with his plans, citizen scrutiny of Parkside this past year has exposed […]

The Gospel According to Jerry

An expert is a person from more than 50 miles away with a briefcase. Recently the city of Asheville hired a group of experts called Goody Clancy all the way from Boston, Mass., to tell us what we should do with our downtown in order to appease our no-growth activists. It seems like we go […]

Asheville City Council

At their two-hour Sept. 18 meeting, Asheville City Council members once again held off on rezoning portions of Merrimon Avenue and approving new rules governing development there after business and property owners reiterated concerns that the proposed changes were too stringent and would cause severe financial hardship. Merrimon’s future: Merrimon Avenue-area residents and businesses were […]

Overseeing the overseers

A growing movement toward citizen oversight has emerged in Asheville that could foreshadow a significant change in enforcement of Asheville’s development regulations. Increasingly, activist groups are tackling development along the Merrimon Avenue and Haywood Road corridors, where road traffic is being matched by burgeoning e-mail traffic within neighborhood organizations such as the Montford and Five […]