The local daily is stirring things up by reporting the City of Asheville spent $350,000 on a retaining wall. The engineering wasn’t all that momentous. The city’s streets and engineering manager, Greg Shuler, wisely stated:
We look at it like the stuff we build is going to last beyond our careers, so we want to be proud of it . . . . And we don’t want it to be a maintenance issue, because we’re the same guys who maintain it.
It was the historic preservation that ran up costs. The original stone was preserved and placed back on the structure. The retaining wall is in Albemarle Park, a national historic district, so it had to be approved by the Historic Resources Commission as being as much like the original as possible. The neighborhood is home to 40-45 families.
Meanwhile, with almost twice the normal rainfall this year, the city has generated a waiting list for repairing eroded asphalt. Work orders have been triaged, as resources are limited.
