Asheville – “If you still have checks, you must still have money” seems to be the way the City of Asheville is working, or not working, as everywhere you look lately in the Asheville news outlets you’ll see massive spending. In addition to the cost of a plethora of outside consulting services to help fix our growing problems, especially in downtown, now we have major issues with infrastructure and facilities that have been neglected—mainly the Civic Center, McCormack Field, the Asheville water system, and now our parking garages.
Just where is all this money coming from? I’ll give you one guess: our taxpayer dollars. But wait, aren’t these facilities supposed to be self-supporting? Don’t we already pay to use them? Yes, we do, and yet the price tag for the needed repairs when you combine them is nearly $200 million.
Asheville’s Water System
We all know about this debacle already, especially those who went without water for up to 10 days over Christmas in 2022. A recent report by an independent review committee showed poor decision-making, major equipment failures, a severe lack of knowledge by city employees, and serious communication issues. The outage occurred after work was started on a $30 million contract approved in July 2022, and according to the report, the outage didn’t need to happen.
Asheville Parking Garages
A recent report by Walker Consultants, who, as part of a $308,595 contract, assessed our four major parking garages, indicated that the cost of repairs for major structural issues, including cracks and severe loss from rust and erosion, will cost $11.3 million in repairs. The breakdown of cost per garage is: Harrah’s Cherokee Center-Asheville garage: $5.33 million; Biltmore Avenue garage: $2.56 million; Wall Street garage: $1.84 million; and Rankin Avenue garage: $1.53 million.
Photos of the damage include a cracked wall in the Rankin Avenue garage, where the description says part of the infill appears detached, and severe section loss of a barrier in the Harrah’s garage.
Asheville Transportation Director Ken Putnam was quoted saying, “I can’t say it was on our radar before the study started. It’s not entirely surprising, though.” He continued that the high cost “greatly exceeds the current available funds the city has, but it needs to be done.”
According to Putnam, they don’t have plans to raise parking rates at this time, but it might be a solution in the future. Putnam also assured that the garages are safe to use, even though the report indicated that if the city continues to defer maintenance, it “may potentially lead to partial structural collapse.”
Asheville Civic Center
Even before the HVAC system broke down, if you visited any events at the Civic Center, you knew it was in trouble. The windows are clouded, the same paint is pealing off of the ceiling and pillars of the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium that have been pealing for years, and according to earlier reports, netting is strung just below the ceiling to keep chunks of it from falling on performers and workers.
Civic Center Commission Board Chair, Donna Bailey, was quoted as saying that they can only use forklifts in the loading area where trucks unload, and they can’t have two of them closer than 15 feet from each other for fear of them falling through the floor, which has been declared unsafe.
The City of Asheville contracted to give naming rights of the city-owned site to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, owned by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, in order to improve the building. The contract was for five years and worth between $3.25 million and up to $5.75 million. Instead, there is a closure of the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium for six to nine months that Chris Corl, director of Community & Regional Entertainment Facilities for the City of Asheville, said will reduce total gross revenues by up to $1.9 million compared to the previous year, and the total cost to repair the HVAC system is close to $1.4 million.
McCormick Field
On March 14th, Asheville City Council unanimously voted to support the funding to bring city-owned McCormick Field into compliance with new league facility standards. The council authorized Asheville’s city manager to sign a funding letter of commitment for McCormick Field. The total project carries a price tag of $37.5 million, which includes a number of improvements, expansions, and maintenance work.
Chris Corl clarified that this commits the city to bring the field back into compliance with MLB standards but does not at this time obligate the city to a dollar amount nor create a lease agreement with the team. Those details will be done at a later date.
Council’s Other Priorities
Instead of dealing with these major infrastructure issues, City Council and the Mayor have put their attention on programs for the homeless that have not helped and bike lanes, against downtown businesses’s requests.
Council member Sage Turner, who felt she cast the deciding vote for downtown bike lanes, said, “As someone who learned in planning school the importance of multi-modes, the importance of future cities, the importance of safe ways of access, I feel compelled to at least try this.” Turner continued, “If it doesn’t go well, we can fix it.” How many hundreds of thousands might that cost?