Asheville – City Manager Debra Campbell took time during the last meeting of Asheville City Council to welcome all the new hires for key positions. These included Fire Chief Michael Cayse, Director of Equity and Inclusion Sala Menaya-Merritt, Transportation Director Jessica Morriss, Police Chief Mike Lamb, Traffic Engineer Chris Cairns, and Assistant Fire Chief Jeremy Knighton. She also welcomed Planning and Urban Design Director Stephanie Monson Dahl, although she stepped up to that position a few months ago.
Brenda Mills and Ken Putnam appear to have retired gracefully after long, dedicated terms of service. Scott Burnette served long and faithfully with the city as well, but the investigation of the water outage last Christmas did mention he got angry enough to quit after essentially being ordered to take actions that went against his better judgment.
The fact that Asheville is flipping police chiefs like pancakes should, however, raise some eyebrows. The city remains unable to hire back the number of officers lost to the Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police movements, which were marked by mass rioting and threats against law enforcement.
As a consequence, a couple people came before council during public comment asking for protection following a rash of smash-and-grabs at Givens Gerber Village. These can be added to other complaints about vandalism, theft, and other forms of lawlessness that trickle through to council at their meetings.
The investigations the city has conducted into the police department have failed to hit the root of the department’s instability and the correlated growing crime rate. So, the remainder of this article will make much ado about the nothingburger council made much ado about.
The main item of discussion on the agenda was whether or not a drive-thru business would be allowed on an outparcel of the TownePlace Suites Marriott Asheville West, newly opened at the Brevard Road exit off I-40. A prohibition on drive-thrus was approved with the site plan, but nobody on council could remember why.
Derek Allen, representing the interests of the developer, said he could not find a buyer for the outparcel so long as the prohibition remained. Allen explained the property was well-suited for a drive-thru, as it was essentially “tucked into” a cloverleaf exit from a major interstate onto a vehicular corridor. He said the prohibition wasn’t in the original conditions half a decade ago, when the site plan was approved 6-1 by the Planning and Zoning Board.
This was, however, the last hotel to be approved before the city’s moratorium went into effect, and at that time, Allen said, there was a “push” for city staff to add conditions. Allen said the developer had consented to all other conditions presented by staff, but the drive-thru ban “made no sense to me then, and it makes no sense to me now,” especially in light of the demand for no-contact commerce in the pandemic era. “It makes even less sense now,” he concluded.
Principal Planner Will Palmquist oriented council to the “machinations” that had brought them to this point. He said the assigned land use and zoning were appropriate for a drive-thru. The building would be about 6,000 square feet and have 48 parking spaces. He reviewed the location of all sidewalks and said he didn’t have much more information than that.
Conceptually, the plan appeared to better accommodate pedestrians and transit users, it supported multimodal connectivity between commercial nodes, and it provided infill development. Planning and Zoning had recommended approving this request with conditions, even though it was “not the grand vision of what the Brevard corridor could be one day.”
Claudia Nix, whom Mayor Esther Manheimer referred to as a “seasoned speaker” at council meetings, introduced herself as the chair of the city’s new Active Transportation Committee. She wanted the prohibition to continue. The parcel stood between the Hominy Creek Greenway and the French Broad River Greenway, which provides pedestrian and cycling connectivity via Carrier Park, all the way down to the New Belgium brewery off Haywood Road.
Asheville’s greenway plans were silent on the matter, but Buncombe County had envisioned getting an easement on the parcel for a connector. With that in mind, Nix argued that drive-thrus create long lines of cars that “spew emissions” as they idle. This, she said, was not appropriate for people who are walking or biking.
City Attorney Brad Branham clarified that, while council could not use conditional zoning to regulate activities, it did have the power to impose conditions on building design, such as whether an eatery would be set up for sit-down or drive-thru service. Council then voted 4-2 to lift the prohibition. Maggie Ullman and Kim Roney were opposed, and Sage Turner was not present.