The Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce asked 450 businesses what their greatest concerns were. Aggressive panhandling was at the top of the list. It’s hard to park the car anymore without interfacing with the panhandling community. Today, I was approached by a guy needing money to feed his sister who was hiding behind the bushes.
Other than that, business owners would like multimodal transportation to be facilitated, and they’d like cleaner streets.
“Especially during warmer months, we get groups of kids smothering the sidewalk. They might have a dog on a rope, so you have problems with dog excrement, which goes to the cleanliness issue ” [the chamber’s president and CEO Kit] Kramer said.
