Boyle column: Development is coming, like it or not

Raise your hand if you like to see trees cut down and buildings go up in their place.

Not seeing a lot of hands out there, except from some of my developer sources.

I'm thinking about development in part because I've been covering a lot of it lately. Sitting in on community meetings or Board of Adjustment hearings gives you a real window into what locals are passionate about, and "stuff getting built near them" definitely ranks way up high.

We clearly have a lot of stuff being built around here, from hotels and apartments to hotels and new retail and hotels and commercial developments to hotels and ginormous highway projects. Did I mention hotels?

More: Asheville's hotel moratorium: What does City Council want to come out of it?

I get it — the building seems excessive at times, and it feels like we're losing the mountain charm that initially drew people here. Not to mention a whole lot of trees in places.

2 proposals, different endings

In my recent greatest hits development list, the Crossroads at West Asheville apartment complex proposal got residents riled up the most, mainly because the Charlotte developer wanted to put up an astounding number of units — 802 — on an old dairy farm next to a church. They also planned self-storage and retail.

The scale was out-sized, and the development was also right outside the city limits, so it required only approval from the Buncombe County Board of Adjustment. It was definitely going to impact the nearby city neighborhoods, but the city had no say.

Amid concerns about potential flooding impacts, traffic and the overall scale, and who knows what other concerns, the developer pulled that project from the county's board.

I also covered the proposal from a Raleigh developer to put 80 town home apartment units on Overlook Road in south Buncombe, on the same site where previous developers have tried to put in a much larger apartment development and a larger subdivision. After intense pressure from neighbors, those two proposals were withdrawn.

But the Buncombe County Board of Adjustment approved the latest proposal, and that did not surprise me at all. As one resident said at a meeting with the developer, it seemed to have an air of inevitability about it, despite neighbors' legitimate concerns about traffic impacts on Overlook, a winding, two-lane road that seems to invite a lot of speeding.

One general sentiment floating around was, "Well, it's better than the previous two proposals."

It is, but it's still going to disturb a good sized chunk of land, and the developer will have to remove about 12 acres of trees for roads and home sites, out of 21.5 acres altogether. It will increase traffic, and a lovely section of woods will become not quite so lovely, even though the developer said he wants to keep as many trees because residents will want a wooded neighborhood.

Hey, they're going to be paying $2,000-$2,400 a month to rent these town homes, and they want nice wooded lots.

Yes, I enjoy irony, too.

While most nearby residents seemed to accept that something would be built on this property, as we do live in America and property rights are pretty near and dear to our hearts, some just didn't want to see any development at all. One neighborhood organizer literally said, "I don't want to see anything built on it."

Cities need to grow, or they die

I totally get that sentiment. At times, I think we'd all just like developers to take a breather, to stop mowing down trees and building more look-alike restaurants and strip malls.

But it's not realistic. We can't move here, as this person did (15 years ago) and I did (25 years ago), and then shut the door behind us, forever preserving the place just the way we found it.

If you've ever lived or worked in a town that's not growing, or even dying, you'll quickly realize it is not a place you want to stay. Jobs dry up, homes drop in value, crime becomes rampant, and before you know it, your once-charming city has no vitality, no attraction to younger people, no reason to stay.

In my Answer Man role here at the paper, I hear from a lot of you about the tree mowing, most lately the future Ingles site on Airport Road, and another sizable lot on Long Shoals Road that Pulliam Properties clear cut for future commercial or retail development.

It is jarring to see. A lovely wooded parcel one day becomes a wasteland of stumps and felled trees within a week, and then they bring the giant mulching machines in to finish it off.

It ain't pretty.

But those two parcels are also on commercial highways designated years ago for development, because communities grow and you better have plans for growth.

Some people clearly think we do not have any plans, or any boards that really enforce any rules, including a thoughtful reader named June Upchurch, who wrote to me about a story I penned about Airport Road development:

"As a newer resident, I find it hard to believe that the jurisdictions in this area haven’t made it a priority to require more from developers and enact stricter development approval standards," she wrote. "Some of the developers your paper has interviewed recently seem to have time-traveled from the 1960s. Surely there is more desire among local governments to preserve and beautify sites to be developed. I know there are a number of environmental organizations that are involved in local issues but they don’t seem to be as concerned about Airport Road and other highly developed corridors? For a region whose claim to fame is natural beauty, it’s strange that we have allowed our gateway from the airport to be a textbook example of suburban sprawl."

She has a point.

Airport Road has become another Tunnel Road, as the reader suggested. It ain't real pretty.

But how is WNC growing?

But I'll say this: It is convenient for people like me who live in Fletcher, or those in southern Buncombe. I moved to that area 22 years ago, and we used to have to drive to Asheville or Hendersonville for Target or Lowe's, clogging highways and burning fuel.

I've written about our growth before, but it's worth revisiting this notion: Here in Buncombe and much of the mountains, we grow at a steady pace, usually in the 2% a year range, but it's generally not driven by natural growth. By that I mean having more births than deaths.

Tom Tveidt at Syneva Economics compiles and studies the data, and last year he sent me a few fun charts illustrating this. For instance, from 2010-18, Buncombe County grew from 238,737 residents to 259,103.

From April 1, 2010-July 1, 2018, Buncombe's population grew by 20,772 people, Tveidt said, but the natural increase over that time frame was 531 (more births than deaths). The total for net migration — people moving here — was 20,006.

More: Asheville population growth slumping as surrounding areas pick up pace

The numbers were even starker for July 1, 2017-July 1, 2018. The total population growth was 1,918, but the natural increase number was actually negative 213 (more people dying than being born). Net migration was 2,121 for the period.

The bottom line with all this is people keep coming here, whether they're retirees or younger people wanting to enjoy West Asheville or outdoors lovers wanting to bask in our mountain glow.

That is not going to stop — in fact, the Asheville Metro area will soon pass 500,000 in population — and that means more housing will come, whether it's apartments or upscale homes or condos. Those residents will want shopping and restaurants and brewpubs and gyms and other stuff nearby, and corporate number-crunchers looking at demographics will be more likely to look here.

And developers will keep building and taking down trees.

Yes, the key is to manage that growth in a way that keeps Asheville from losing the very charms that bring people here in the first place — gorgeous mountain vistas, crystal streams and yes, forests.

Asheville and Buncombe's elected and appointed boards should take a hard look at their development rules and consider updates and changes to make development more thoughtful and less intrusive.

Personally, I'd also like to see them do away with the quasi-judicial hearing processing in making development decisions, as the stilted legal process limits those who can testify, makes residents feel unheard and even necessitates hiring attorneys at times. It's not a good look for a democratic, transparent process.

In a world in which the effects of global warming are ever more apparent, we also clearly need to pay attention to protecting our tree canopy and limiting tree removal.

But what we can't do is shut the door and say, "No more development, ever!"

That's not going to happen.

This is the opinion of John Boyle. Contact him at 828-232-5847 or jboyle@citizentimes.com.