Much was said about letting the free market settle matters at the Asheville Downtown Master Planning meeting. Tom Gallaher, one of the planners from Goody Clancy, even pointed out how chain stores served essential purposes downtown. He mentioned that there needed to be give and take for all involved. It had appeared things may have taken a change for the better, but false premises continued to underlie the ambitions of the planners.
At a meeting of the Advisory Committee for the Asheville Downtown Master Plan the next day, Chris Peterson lambasted members of Goody Clancy for not capturing the main point of discussions at the Chamber of Commerce. Peterson said he heard loud and clear that developers did not want to be extorted by city council, like the Grove Park Inn was to put in $26,000 of unnecessary traffic calming for the city. Actively listening, David Dixon of Goody Clancy paraphrased back that developers need to contribute to the public good, and so clear and equitable guidelines need to be established for redistributing the wealth.
Peterson asked for information on the next public input session so he could try to contact business owners and property owners who are too busy running the wheelworks of the economy to make the meetings. Dwight Butner offered that those who will be paying for the visions other people want to have on their property don’t show up at the meetings because they’re tired of being drowned out and stuck with the bill.
Planners from Goody Clancy are also interested in creating TIF districts. TIFs represent risky investments of tax dollars, and the economy is precarious. Sadly, Asheville’s low-income neighborhoods with large concentrations of Blacks were all signaled out as areas that needed to change. With Asheville’s love of diversity, it was difficult to believe the visioneers had so little anthropological respect for other cultures as to want everybody to trim their houses like a white man.
More meetings will be held at the end of July, but between now and then, Goody Clancy wants to meet with special interest groups. Representatives from Goody Clancy were mystified about the lack of media support for the project, and they want to get inserts in newspapers, posters in windows, maybe even moms passing out flyers on street corners, to show that the various constituencies in town are very much on-board with the program.
