Smiling state and local officials wielding golden shovels were among those gathered June 29 for the official groundbreaking of Glen Rock Depot in the River District. The ambitious project, which calls for renovating the old Glen Rock Hotel and constructing a new 90,000 square foot building, will combine affordable housing, office space and a bar/performance venue.
Managed by Mountain Housing Opportunities, a local nonprofit, the ambitious project has already been in the works for four years. An adjacent historic structure was renovated in 2007 and is now occupied by the Fine Arts League of the Carolinas.
“It's often said that Asheville should be a great place to live, work and play,” MHO Executive Director Scott Dedman told the crowd. “I often think we give a lot of attention to the play part, but not the living and working part: the jobs and the housing… it’s all part of the picture.”
The project’s 18 backers include Mission Hospital, along with various banks and nonprofits; state and local tax credits are also helping with the funding. Glen Rock Depot will feature 60 rental apartments as well as retail space, offices and artists studios. The apartments will fall in the $325 to $700 a month range.
According to information provided by Mountain Housing Opportunities, the buildings will meet LEED environmental standards and are scheduled for completion next year.
Asheville Mayor (and former MHO director) Terry Bellamy praised the project, proclaiming, “Today is a great day. There are nearly 10,000 jobs within a one-mile radius of this neighborhood, and [project manager] Cindy Weeks saw that. Remember how bad it used to be four years ago, how much graffitti there was? How many abandoned cars there were? Today we're here as a testament to one person's vision.”
Inside the Glen Rock lies the future home of The Magnetic Field, a club and performance venue being launched by locals Jonathan Frappier and Chall Gray.
“We'll be able to seat about 50 in here,” said Frappier, indicating a portion of the site. “Fifty more up on the roof. We'll be the only performing-arts facility in the Southeast that offers breakfast, lunch and dinner as well. By doing that, we're not as dependent on ticket sales.”
“We're going to be the only place in not just Asheville but the Southeast that's focusing on original work,” Gray added.
Are they worried about opening up a club in tight economic times?
“I think that by being an anchor here, it allows us to create more jobs for everyone,” said Frappier. “This is actually a good time to do this because we can create a symbiotic relationship.”
This year's festival will close at 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, an hour earlier than in the past. Two main stages have been eliminated. There won’t be any ticketed musical events, and about a dozen fewer free musical acts will perform during the festival’s three-day run July 24-26. There's one less food court, and all children's activities will be housed indoors at the Asheville Civic Center.
"Financially, it made sense to do it," says Sandra Travis, who directs Bele Chere for the city. "I feel really good about how we're doing things. We're going through that budget with a fine-toothed comb."
All told, the city plans to slash its Bele Chere spending by about $330,000 this year. That's about a 40 percent cut, including a $125,000 reduction in the entertainment budget.
A number of small changes have added up to big savings, notes Travis. Having two food courts instead of three means needing one ice truck instead of two. Moving the children's activities indoors cuts down on expenses for generators and electrical service, she explains. The festival is also considering reusing old banners and decorations instead of buying new ones.
For a time, it seemed that Bele Chere would just keep bulking up. Launched on a single downtown street in 1979 to lure visitors to Asheville's then-dreary downtown, the festival muscled into more territory and drew bigger crowds every year. Tourist dollars flowed to craft vendors, musicians and downtown businesses alike.
Now billed as the Southeast's biggest free outdoor festival, the annual event has tallied more than 300,000 “visits” in recent years. (Lacking an official head count, organizers instead tally festival visits.)
The downsizing comes amid one of the toughest economic climates Asheville and the country as a whole have seen. But it’s not just the recession that’s tamping down the festival. For the past couple of years, city leaders have been contemplating Bele Chere’s future, in response to long-running concerns.
Some local merchants said the teeming masses clogging city streets were actually bad for business. Local musical acts snubbed by an event that kept looking farther afield for talent cooked up their own "Anti-Bele Chere" concert. And despite its size, massive street party often bled red ink, forcing City Council to spend taxpayer dollars to make up the shortfall.
There was a general sense that the festival was getting out of control, and in 2007 the city held forums to solicit feedback and start charting a new course for the three-day bash.
"I'm excited,” says Travis, who took the helm this year from longtime Festivals Coordinator Melissa Porter. “We need to bring this back home," declares Travis, who's been working with the event since 1988. "For locals who have avoided Bele Chere because it was too big, I would like them to come back and give it a try again. It won't be as overwhelming."
They move with precision: a huddle here, a handoff there. It's all done with single-minded purpose, keeping an eye on the prize. The only difference is the playing surface: a kitchen.
Since winning a regional competition April, A-B Tech's Hot Food Team has been practicing hard. The win put them in the "final four" of national college cooking, and next month, team members Michael Aanonsen, Steven Goff, Travis McCloud, Anna McClintock and Shannon Ginn will compete against three other teams for the American Culinary Federation's national student championship.
It's been an exciting ride for a group whose school already boasted a national reputation for excellence in its hospitality and culinary programs. A-B Tech's team placed second in the finals in 2006 and won it all in 2007. Last year, the team barely failed to make the final four, losing by a mere 0.06 point in the regional.
"When the team steps off the bus in Orlando, it's game on," says Bronwen McCormick, who chairs A-B Tech's culinary arts and hospitality program. "They're representing A-B Tech, and they do a beautiful job with that."
Each Monday, the team gathers for practice, trying to simulate the real contest's pressure-cooker conditions. In Orlando, the kitchens will be set up in a convention hall where people can buy tickets to watch. Each team will have four hours and 40 minutes to prepare and serve 24 plates each of an appetizer, a salad, an entrée and a dessert.
The A-B Tech team is focusing on attention to detail in the dishes and on really working together. During the competition, says Aanonsen, "You try not to get too cocky, because you can make little mistakes."
Each team begins with a total of 40 points, so they’re really fighting to maintain poise and perfection, notes Michelle Kelley, one of the local team’s three coaches. "Teams are judged on everything — cleanliness, organization, timing, cooking technique" and much more, she says. Scoring is "weighted toward taste, but it all adds up."
A-B Tech's actual menu is a closely guarded secret, says fellow coach Charles deVries, who teaches baking and pastry. The team won the regional with a classic fish dish, a salad of mixed greens with pine-nut-encrusted Brie, a pork tenderloin dish and a hazelnut-cream dessert. Might any of that be on the menu for the finals? DeVries isn't talking.
"We had a number of changes we made to our menu that are working out better than before. We're trying to find ways to get the most out of the food we're working with," he says.
In the finals, A-B Tech will be up against teams from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, Pittsburgh Chapter; Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Mich.; and Kapi‘olani Community College in Honolulu.
The Asheville team is trying to raise $10,000 to cover the cost of its trip to the nationals. For more information, go to http://abtech.edu/buyamile/ or call Lee Sokol at 254-1921, ext. 244.
The competition for $7.2 billion in federal stimulus funds for rural broadband development is about to begin, and the Asheville-based Mountain Area Information Network aims to be a front-runner in securing some of that cash.
Executive Director Wally Bowen says his organization will be applying as part of a coalition of locally owned Internet service providers who’ve been working together for six months. MAIN will team up with BalsamWest FiberNET, Pangaea and ERC Broadband.
"What we're trying to create is a comprehensive, regionwide proposal that includes both fiber funding, middle-mile funding and last-mile funding," he explains.
Details of the project are still being worked out, notes Bowen, who declined to give an estimate of how much money the coalition will ask for. "It's a substantial request," he says, that will include a number of "shovel-ready" projects across Western North Carolina. One example is MAIN's vision of a wireless network blanketing Asheville, which would deliver Internet service to 90 percent of Asheville's low-income and public housing complexes.
Getting high-speed Internet service to rural areas in WNC is critical to bridging a digital divide that has left rural residents with either no broadband service at all or else with fewer choices that often cost more. Broadband is critical to the nation’s economy, according to President Barack Obama's administration, which maintains that pushing access deeper into rural areas will create jobs and spur commerce.
MAIN is a nonprofit Internet service provider. BalsamWest is a partnership between the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and Drake Enterprises, a Macon County software company. Pangaea is a fiber-optic network based in Polk and Rutherford counties. The Asheville-based ERC Broadband, meanwhile, is a nonprofit that seeks to expand the region's fiber-optic network and technical infrastructure.
Two federal agencies — the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utilities Service — will dispense the money via loans and grants. Most of it is earmarked for nonprofits and local government entities. Grant application windows are expected in July, November and May of 2010. But in the coming days, the two agencies are slated to explain how to submit an application.
The goal is to make high-speed Internet as accessible and widespread as other basic infrastructure (think electricity). But the cost of establishing broadband in these rugged mountains can deter for-profit companies.
That's why the federal grants are so important, says Bowen, who’s written an instructional manual for anyone interested in leveraging stimulus funds to start a local wireless broadband company.
"Our fear is that community media organizations may not feel confident in applying for funding, so that's why we created a little road map," he explains.
The “cookbook” (http://main.nc.us/lan-recipe/) clearly spells out the steps involved and explains the often perplexing technical jargon. Bowen says the manual is starting to get some attention, and he's talking to organizations such as Free Press, the Media and Democracy Coalition and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California to get help in distributing it.
Following months of rancor, WPVM, Asheville's low-power FM community radio station, recently announced changes both in its programming and in the way it works with volunteers.
The changes have meant that many of the station's volunteers and most of its local programming have left the station, which is housed in the Vanderbilt Apartments in downtown Asheville. Volunteers who have left say they were driven away.
But Executive Director Wally Bowen of the Mountain Area Information Network, says the changes were needed so the station could meet its strategic vision. MAIN, a nonprofit Internet service provider, holds the broadcast license to WPVM, and Bowen has overseen the station.
The strife at the station began last fall and has centered on a debate about how WPVM should be governed. Some volunteers complained about Bowen's management, but he says he was acting in the station’s best interest.
MAIN’s board issued a statement last September saying it had removed Bowen from direct oversight of the station. The board approved a resolution recommending “a new governance structure requiring WPVM to report directly to a subcommittee of the board.” But a few months later, Bowen reasserted control of the station, saying that the earlier action had been temporary.
A paid manager runs the station. In May, Bowen hired audio-studio owner Bruce Sales as interim manager, and the station spent about $6,000 upgrading studio equipment. Sales owns 2BruceStudio in Asheville.
Sales replaced Kim Clark, a former station manager at popular public-radio station WNCW. Clark quit two weeks after Bowen hired her in late February to help get WPVM back on track.
Her arrival was heralded as the first step in easing the impasse between station management and volunteers. Clark said at the time that she’d been through similar tensions at her former station and believed she could help WPVM improve internal communications as well as general operations.
But she said the problems at WPVM were so deep that they required immediate action before any progress could be made.
Earlier this year, Bowen asked several volunteers to stay away from the station to allow for a "cooling-off period." He has since established a new application process for volunteers that "will emphasize MAIN's overall media-reform work and strategic vision," he noted in a post on the WPVM Web site.
"To this end, we are committed to doing a much better job in providing orientation for new volunteers. Similarly, we will be more selective in choosing volunteers to ensure a better fit between MAIN's strategic vision and a volunteer applicant's interests and abilities," Bowen wrote.
He also instituted contracts for producers of local programming.
In terms of programming, Bowen wrote that WPVM will place a stronger emphasis on news and public affairs, while music programming "will be more strategic — and community-oriented — to reflect the vibrant and eclectic music scene in and around Asheville."
Longtime WPVM volunteers see the changes as heralding nothing less than the death of a community radio station. Barry Summers, a former WPVM volunteer writing on the blog http://www.wpvm.blogspot.com said the latest actions appear "to finally close the door on any hope that WPVM will become the station we were striving to make it."
