Asheville's 100-year-old magnolia tree faces the hatchet ...
"Inside the Park" condominiums raises community ire ...
City Council to decide fate of people's park ...
WILL COUNCIL TRIM ASHEVILLE'S CENTRAL PARK?
Photo by Wikipedia Commons
HATCHET JOB: COUNTDOWN TO A MESSY CUTTING ...
PROPOSED "PARKSIDE" CONDO PROJECT INCLUDES PACK SQUARE PARK LAND
NEWS ANALYSIS BY BYRON BELZAK
The mighty magnolia in Asheville's central park has stood for 100 years. In a few weeks, Stewart Coleman, one of Asheville's most powerful citizens, and his hatchet men may have the power to chop it down.
It's now up to Asheville City Council to sort out the mess created by the Buncombe County Commissioners.
Here's the latest lowdown, public poop, and bold blogs concerning the controversial Coleman/Swag Holdings/Black Dog Realty proposal to take down the tree and build a high-rise condo, known as Parkside Condominiums.
Ironically, "Parkside" would not be located beside the park, rather, many argue, it would be constructed inside the park, within the historic heart of Downtown Asheville, at Pack Square, inside a park deeded to the city by George Willis Pack with the stipulation that nothing, nada, no building would ever and forever be built inside the gifted park. Talk rages about a family-brought lawsuit and its likely outcome.
The stakes are as high as the drama.
No matter who is considered right, and no matter what anyone says, this downtown development battle is shaping up to be Public Interest versus Private Interest, Powerful Family versus Old Family, even, perhaps, Good versus Bad. How one defines those terms is up for grabs. For sure, it's a mess, a mighty could-have-been-avoided mess.
Coleman's currently planned Parkside Condominiums building would include previous park land that was sold by the current Buncombe County commissioners. And for that many Asheville Area citizens are spitting angry.
And boatloads of questions continue to surface about how this park land sale could even have gone through in the first place without public input. Who was minding the Jewel of the City?
For sure, it's a classic backroom deal, for which Commissioner David Gannt apologizes. As to be expected, other County Commissioners do not. And through it all, the watchdog group that calls itself Pack Square Conservancy says it's monitoring the situation. What a situation, indeed.
The final chapter approaches.
Powerful grassroots organizations are urging Asheville City Council and the planning and zoning department to stop the project. No final word yet.
The Downtown Commission likes the project. Some business folks like it, too. Others don't.
Pressure grows on all sides. Is the Parkside Problem the final straw that forces City Council to institute a temporary building moratorium, "a pause to plan," as Asheville PARC terms it?
Ashevillians against the Parkside project are reaching out far and wide, even to Portland, Oregon, to help understand this mess and the very definition of what "progress" is, or should be.
And this Parkside political-cultural-social-financial-legal-ethical mess made at least one Philadelphian who became an Ashevillian search local used bookstores for a copy of James Michener's shortest book, "Quality of Life."
Of course, Michener's "Quality" may not provide any direct answers as they pertain to Parkside and Downtown Asheville's future; however, it may provide some solace for the weary of the same old, same old.
You know: one searches for the perfect American dream, finds it, then crushes it with love. And it's nobody's fault. Right? Anyway, Michener says it much more eloquently and weighs all sides with genius precision.
So many questions. So much uncertainty. So ... Oh!
In private and in public, frustrated citizens have pointedly questioned the mettle of Asheville City Council, its very backbone, in standing up to developers' every wish and whim. Remember how so smooth as butter The Ellington approval ran through the butter knife of scrutiny by the previously elected progressive Council?
And perhaps understandably (but certainly unsightly), at least one City Council member publiclly got all in a huff this time about one citizen's public accusation that the Council was, in so many words, "on the take." Did she protest too much?
Q: Will the beauty and expansiveness of Pack Square Park be lost forever?
A: It's up to this Mayor and City Council.
Q: Will loading docks be allowed to be built next to a historic church valued by the African-American community?
A: It's up to this Mayor and City Council.
Q: Who will control the sustainability, heritage and pedestrian-friendliness of Downtown Asheville?
A: Three things are certain: One, it's a showdown for what matters most to Asheville's most powerful. Two, it's a crossroads of whether Asheville is a city of towers or not. Three, it's a countdown to a cutting of a mighty tree, which might mark the end -- or continuation -- of a dream of what Asheville still remains -- beautiful, enchanting, accessible, friendly, funky, sexy, unique.
The countdown to a crossroads begins ... WHEN?
City Council will vote possibly as early as May 2008 to approve or disapprove the Parkside project -- and decide to save or destroy Downtown Asheville's famous magnolia. And in the process Council will choose to crush or conserve something much more valuable, more fragile, more important: the public trust.
Copyright 2008 MediaBear All rights reserved.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Law firm McGuire, Wood, Bissette represents SBColeman.
Bissette used to represent the grassroots group, Asheville PARC, and now has jumped the fence to represent Coleman.
Coleman built 21 Battery Park condos that now overshadows the smaller, historic Flat Iron Building.
Parkside Condo building architect Mark Fishero of Fishero-McGuire-Krueger told Council there's nothing fishy about the Pack Square project idea.
For more news about newly proposed Downtown Asheville high-rises, click here>
The Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe says the downtown skyland has not changed much since the 1920s. Click Here>
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