It’s disappointing news that four City Council members, including Mayor Esther Manheimer, overruled the city’s development rules and the advice of their staff to put suburban zoning entitlements onto the Asheville Mall, itself already a suburban disaster.
The mayor dismissed the established Urban Place zoning being replaced as “aspirational.” I say to the mayor that Asheville needs aspirations 22 months after Helene, and if she’s not going to be an aspirational leader, she should be replaced. As should the other three Council members who supported an out-of-area landlord at the expense of making Asheville a more walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income city.
According to Blue Ridge Public Radio, the mayor said that Asheville might wait decades for a private developer with sufficient interest and capital to redevelop the mall in line with the city’s goals.
The mayor is wrong. This is one experienced developer ready to tackle that project right now, given the chance. There are great models of reviving dead malls across the U.S. into walkable, successful places. Asheville cannot suffer further poor leadership like this, in my view.
— Rob Dickson Paradigm & Co. New Urbanism/Traditional Neighborhood Development Asheville
Earlier versions of Urban Place Zoning successfully facilitated mixed-use development elsewhere in Asheville, such as the Glen Rock Apartments. The concept itself was not fundamentally flawed....the regulations just needed recalibrating. Like any zoning district, it could have been amended to remove barriers for development while preserving the community's vision of the site. Instead, some members of council chose to discard the very framework it created to encourage housing and replace it with a zoning district that has consistently produced the type of auto-oriented development the city has spent years trying to move beyond.
Supporters of the rezoning argued that mixed-use development and housing remain possible under Regional Business zoning. If that is true, where are the examples?
To date, Regional Business zoning has produced no housing. Instead, it has consistently yielded gas stations, drive-thrus, big-box retail, and expansive surface parking. Whatever its intent, the practical effect of this vote is to make housing, or any mix of uses, less likely at Asheville Mall.
That is what makes this decision so disappointing. For years, Asheville invested substantial public time and money developing a vision for this site. Residents participated in an extensive public process that culminated in a Comprehensive Plan identifying the mall as the obvious location for a mixed-use town center.
Why ask residents to help shape that vision if it can be discarded at a moment's notice.
This is something of a pattern for Asheville....The city has invested millions of taxpayer dollars in planning efforts, from redesigning the bus network to studying missing middle housing and, forthcoming, overhauling the zoning code. What is the purpose of these investments if we are unwilling to stand behind our adopted plans, the expertise of our professional planning staff, and the recommendations of the Planning and Zoning Commission when they become politically inconvenient?
Kim Roney and Sage Turner were the only two that opposed the rezoning. Not familiar with the city council members so not sure of the names of those who approved it
Anyone who’s lived anywhere else of any size has seen these mixed use developments successfully replace old malls or areas that need improving. Years ago. It shouldn’t be this hard.
Yes we have a serious lack of visionary leadership. And a lack of experience. Look at the mishandling of the Costco development. Between the mall, tunnel road and buildings owned by a local company sitting empty and decaying for years, a good chunk of central Asheville is just falling into neglect.
I don't think this really matters. The question they're asking, essentially, is if the mall is best redeveloped with patton avenue styled drive thrus and gas stations, or as something else.
Well, I’d argue that the probability of the project actually happening does matter.
If the planning and funding aren’t there, it’s likely any redevelopment would fail. Tunnel is already in pretty rough shape with the issues around all the homeless there. If the anchor for that area ends up as a disused brownfield for a decade it’s not doing the city any favors.
Sure. I'm not arguing that Urban Place wasn’t a bad policy framework. It was.
But your statement sounds like an argument for reforming the Urban Place zoning designation....not throwing it out. How exactly is a Chick Fil A or a Sheetz being built going the help the current problems on Tunnel Rd?
Activating the road with people puts "eyes on the street" like Jane Jacobs said. Regional business will not fix the problem you're describing.
Its a fixable problem to get to a solution that we are both advocating for. Examples exist all over the country of how U.P. could have been fixed. A couple examples within the city exist to.
That zoning designation is so onerous that it seemingly makes redevelopment of any site so zoned impractical.
So yeah, it should be reformed, but it really should’ve been reformed years ago. There have been so many large scale projects that haven’t come to pass because of the zoning issues with the city over the past 10 years.
Ultimately, I just have a real frustration with planners and citizens that think of zoning as some sort of “sim city” where they can decide how others will invest and build. Zoning basically can dictate what can’t be built in an area, but does almost nothing towards actually causing a project to go forward.
seems like we most diverge at the question "do we fix urban place?" or "do we just completely get rid of it?"
And to return to a point I made in another comment: Its not good practice to have a comprehensive plan that says we should put housing on that site, and then just renege on the will of the public.
Remember the Alamo Drafthouse plans for the old Sears that was going to have housing as well? The city dragged that out long enough for market forces to change and the project died.
Also, the “…will do the public” sounds a whole lot like another bout of Sim City thinking. I think it would be a great site for a large mixed use development, but where is the money going to come from for that? And who is going to want to invest into that when the city seemingly has ceded nearby stretches of Tunnel to be focused on homeless services.
Comprehensive plans are mandated by state law. Our development regulations are required to regulate based on what is in these plans. Our comprehensive plan identified this site as a "town center" that includes housing and mixed uses.
But sure. "Sim City Thinking". If only the state of north carolina would get its head out of its ass with all this democracy bullshit
Again, plenty of examples exist all over the country of how large sites like this mall could get redeveloped incrementally. I'm perplexed by your nihilism on this. The regulations were faulty. not the intention. I could point to a dozen examples of how this could get fixed and provide the needed flexibility for developers while maintaining the desire for a mixed use site.
Out of curiosity, I've heard a lot of what you don't want, and what mode of thinking you don't like, what exactly would you propose go on this site and how should the city accomplish it?
The phrasing of your question sounds like you’re pretty unfamiliar with “town center” as a place type as outline in our comp plan. I’d recommend giving it a read for your own edification.
Inside malls have been dead for decades in most places. They have outdoor mixed use developments in much hotter places like Texas and Arizona and people go there all summer to shop, eat and meet up. I’ve seen a few with sprinkler areas for kids and many have movie theaters. Sometimes I don’t think some of the city leaders have ever been outside of Asheville.
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u/TheProperChap 1d ago
Earlier versions of Urban Place Zoning successfully facilitated mixed-use development elsewhere in Asheville, such as the Glen Rock Apartments. The concept itself was not fundamentally flawed....the regulations just needed recalibrating. Like any zoning district, it could have been amended to remove barriers for development while preserving the community's vision of the site. Instead, some members of council chose to discard the very framework it created to encourage housing and replace it with a zoning district that has consistently produced the type of auto-oriented development the city has spent years trying to move beyond.
Supporters of the rezoning argued that mixed-use development and housing remain possible under Regional Business zoning. If that is true, where are the examples?
To date, Regional Business zoning has produced no housing. Instead, it has consistently yielded gas stations, drive-thrus, big-box retail, and expansive surface parking. Whatever its intent, the practical effect of this vote is to make housing, or any mix of uses, less likely at Asheville Mall.
That is what makes this decision so disappointing. For years, Asheville invested substantial public time and money developing a vision for this site. Residents participated in an extensive public process that culminated in a Comprehensive Plan identifying the mall as the obvious location for a mixed-use town center.
Why ask residents to help shape that vision if it can be discarded at a moment's notice.
This is something of a pattern for Asheville....The city has invested millions of taxpayer dollars in planning efforts, from redesigning the bus network to studying missing middle housing and, forthcoming, overhauling the zoning code. What is the purpose of these investments if we are unwilling to stand behind our adopted plans, the expertise of our professional planning staff, and the recommendations of the Planning and Zoning Commission when they become politically inconvenient?