Collectively, small private landowners hold over half of all forest lands in Western North Carolina. Encouraging these landowners to practice sustainable forest management, experts say, is critically important to addressing the effects of climate change, combating invasive species and pests, and preserving biological diversity.
As Dogwood Alliance celebrates its 20th anniversary, the local organization reflects on its accomplishments influencing the wood sourcing practices of some of America’s largest corporations. Now the group is poised to take on an even larger challenge: fighting European environmental regulations that Dogwood Alliance says are paradoxically endangering Southern forests.
My daddy taught me to learn from my mistakes. Please remind City Council to learn from theirs. I am very unhappy about selling the property in [the area of] the U.S. Cellular Center, Basilica of St. Lawrence, Pack Library and Grove Arcade to McKibbon. Here are some examples Council can learn from. Staples: Council struggled […]
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 […]
Staples displayed the proposed design changes for its Merrimon Avenue façade in a Jan. 28 press conference called by company executives and Mayor Terry Bellamy. Both camps aim to settle another festering issue in the long-running and often acrimonious debate about the city’s interpretation and enforcement of the Unified Development Ordinance. Staples and Greenlife Grocery […]
It’s been a year since professor David Owens of the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill formally presented the Asheville City Council with the results of his detailed review of three controversial development projects (see “Asheville City Council,” Aug. 30, 2006 Xpress). Council members had asked Owens to assess the situation after the Coalition of […]
“I think — pardon the expression — that it’s a foul charge. … It seems like they’re … trying to cage us.” — Picnics co-owner Ron Smith photo by Kent Priestley Jason Martin first played The Chicken 10 years ago, when he was still a student at UNCA. Since then, a handful of others have […]
With a laugh, Shuford feigned surprise that the Staples office-supply building swept the voting among bad examples. The good, the good-or-bad and the ugly: The Atlanta Bread Company and the Medicine Shoppe topped a recent poll of Merrimon-area residents for best design, while CVS Pharmacy and the Medicine Shoppe finished first and second in the […]
When the city goofs: Newly planted trees fill in for a mature woods that once screened the Campus Crest development from nearby residences — woods that were cut down because, as Planning Director Scott Shuford put it, he didn’t do “a very good job of communicating that.” photo by Cecil Bothwell. In a sense, Asheville’s […]
“The Planning and Development Department staff respects the Unified Development Ordinance and makes reasonable interpretations within the authority entrusted in them.” – Planning & Development Director Scott Shuford Looming problem: Use of the Greenlife loading dock requires large trucks to park illegally within a UDO-mandated sight-visibility triangle. photo by Jodi Ford A review of three […]
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 […]
Fresh from a weekend retreat where they outlined priorities for the coming year, Asheville City Council members bulled their way through a host of topics at the Jan. 24 formal session. Two new residential proposals — including a downtown high-rise condominium development — sailed through the approval process, greased by design details that Council found […]
