Sitting on a bench one recent sunny afternoon, Steven Lloyd gazes to his right, a big smile immediately rolling across his face.

“When I look over there, I see potential — a lot of potential,” he said.

Getting a movie to come to town isn’t something that happens overnight.

Sylva’s leaders are applauding a plan to build a new apartment complex across the road from Harris Hospital as a step toward addressing the town’s long-standing shortage of housing that’s affordable to workers on the low end of the income scale.

Preparation and planning for a $6 million renovation and expansion of the Waynesville library have been playing out behind the scenes for more than a year, laying critical groundwork in advance of a community fundraising campaign that’s about to go public.

Haywood County commissioners will hold a public hearing next Monday on whether to give away the “old hospital” to a developer who will turn it into an affordable apartment complex.

On paper, the case for a new, bigger Haywood County Animal Shelter is hard to justify.

The animal shelter and health department are in, and the swimming pool and Green Energy Park expansion are out, Jackson County commissioners decided in a wide-ranging discussion of capital improvement priorities recently.

A three-way finger-pointing contest over cracks in Southwestern Community College’s biggest building — and their relation to construction work on the R-5000 connector road project — could result in a lawsuit if the parties involved aren’t able to decide who should pay to fix it.

A comprehensive public safety campus is coming into shape in Haywood County with the construction of a new EMS and emergency management headquarters beside the sheriff’s office in Hazelwood.

Jackson County is moving ahead with an effort to free up more space in its Health Department.