Thanks for noticing we have problems with urban planning on Merrimon Avenue. Even worse than the Temple to the Goddess of Urban Planning is the infamous Great Wall of Merrimon. Staples bought a lot that sloped considerably toward the road. Since the UDO required new buildings to be “up to the curb,” the developers had to infill like crazy and build the one-story store on top of a huge retaining wall. Citizens and the mayor are still making demands on Staples to transform the building into something aesthetically appealing.

Just to the south, the gas station has a wall mural of billiard balls that doesn’t seem to offend anybody. A little further north, you get to a 6’ retaining wall topped by the lovely lawn of a church. If somebody else buys the property, they’re going to have to excavate a chunk out of the retaining wall for street trees – or apply for a variance. Another church up the road would have the same problem. A little further north, you get to the former location of The Hop. It is a triangular lot. The man who purchased the lot showed up at a public forum to raise a stink about having enough room to plant one tree after he provides the 10’ sidewalk and street tree buffer for two of the three sides. The lot was on the market within a week.

Traveling on, you get to Noi’s Thai Kitchen. Lenny, the owner, got in trouble with the city for using sandwich boards to advertise lunch specials and generate some tax revenue for the city. Lenny screened his dumpster to help with the neighborhood aesthetics, and then his fencing was tagged by a graffiti artist.

Not much further up the road is the Temple, and just a little further is Ingle’s. Ingle’s likes to renovate its store in thirds, but if they have to pull their buildling up to the curb, there won’t be any place for people to park during a renovation. They’d have to close long enough to go out of business, say their representatives.

Coming back down the west side, is the Edney Building. People hate it because it sits on the curb like the UDO wants it to. Nearby is the Medicine Shoppe, a building of exquisite architecture. I haven’t had the privilege of interviewing the owner, but his neighbors assure me he went through Hades to construct something conforming.

Across from Lenny’s is the hole created when a car slammed into a building. Due to insurance problems, the hole has remained fenced off and sometimes covered with plastic for a couple years. Lenny said at one time it was infested with rats. Evidently it doesn’t affect the city’s sense of place.

A little further south, one finds the mortuary, a perfectly manicured work of art. It grabs some as tasteless that the city would require them, should they undertake a major overhaul, to create a mixed-use second story. Some have shamelessly suggested drop-in housing for the elderly.

Below the funeral home is a dry cleaner’s/fabric store. The owners have lived in Asheville since Claxton School was burning coal and World War II refugees were hanging baby diapers all over the Grove Park Inn’s lobby. They can’t really afford to build a second story with the elevators they would need to make their building ADA compliant.

After the first few new urbanist pedestrian-friendly buildings made it to the real world, citizens were in such an uproar, former Planning Director Scott Shuford suggested that Mike Lewis, a local activist, form a Merrimon Avenue Study Group. They sent out surveys at the mayor’s direction to anybody and even had them online so people in Australia could vote. The questions were loaded toward a mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, Buckhead look. The Libertarian Party of Buncombe County responded by MALPing the street. Surveys were left at each door and about eight people actually made the effort to find a stamp and return them. Everybody scored 100%.

Shortly thereafter, but not necessarily as a consequence, the property owners on Merrimon Avenue started demanding a say in what they could do with their own property. Months later, many still had not heard that the community had been coming together to vision about their property. To date, the Merrimon Avenue Corridor Plan continues to be stalled thanks to the strong showing of property owners at the last community input meeting and council’s willingness to hear that business owners on Merrimon wanted to be able to afford to stay. The underworldly new urbanist stipulations in the UDO, however, remain in force unamended.