When new bikers show up for his weekly ride in Waynesville, Cecil Yount pulls out all the stops: a riveting trip through town to Super Wal-Mart and back.

While lacking in scenery, Yount is sending a message to the cyclists — look how easy it is to bike to the store.

Yount’s regular jaunts down South Main Street give him a rare insight on traffic, one he hopes to impart as the town crafts a vision for a South Main makeover. Namely, Yount doesn’t think the street needs to be much wider than it already is.

“I have yet to see the need for four lanes of traffic,” Yount said. “There have been fairly minimal times I have spent sitting waiting on a light. I just don’t see it.”

Yount, the chair of Bicycle Haywood NC, plans to be front and center at a road design workshop next Tuesday when the town will collect input on South Main from the community.

Perhaps it’s no surprise a cyclist wants a quainter road, one with slower traffic, wide sidewalks, shady trees, and not as many lanes for cars.

But even development interests aren’t necessarily clamoring for more lanes, even though South Main sports the ultimate magnet for commercial sprawl. Property owners raced to put their lots on the market when Super Wal-Mart came to town three years ago. They are still waiting for the boon, although real estate experts claim it will come to fruition sooner or later and has merely been sidelined by the recession.

Brian Noland, a Realtor with RE/MAX Mountain Realty, represents half a dozen sellers marketing their property for commercial development along South Main. His office sits on South Main, making Noland another authority when it comes to sizing up traffic needs on the road.

His verdict: three lanes would do nicely, perhaps even with roundabouts instead of the standard stoplights.

When asked whether South Main seems congested, Noland paused, then answered, “I don’t think it is.”

To be sure, he wheeled around and asked his coworkers in the office. Not congested, they concurred.

Noland believes South Main will eventually be home to a row of fast-food restaurants, drug stores and retail. But he wants to keep “our hometown image.”

But Noland is also trying to protect the lots he’s marketing. More lanes will eat into the property fronting South Main and make the lots harder to develop, he said.

That’s also why he’s a fan of roundabouts. Traffic lights equal turn lanes for stacks of cars to pile up while waiting for their signal. Those turn lanes add to the road’s width and encroach on precious commercial lots.

Roundabouts, on the other hand, keep traffic moving and don’t need turn lanes for cars to queue up in, Noland said.

Waynesville has two roundabouts, which were initially met with skepticism but in practice have been well received.

“I didn’t like them immediately when I moved here because they were new, but they really move the traffic through,” Noland said.

Road designers with the N.C. Department of Transportation are conducting their own feasibility study of South Main concurrently with the town, and have proposed a large four-lane road with a center median.

“I think everyone has been assuming that is what will happen there, that it will be four lanes,” said Paul Benson, Waynesville’s town planner.

But Benson said the DOT plan is too big and too wide for the town’s tastes. Town leaders want a more tailored vision, designed in keeping with smart growth principles and walkable community ideals.

“DOT strictly stuck with just a road and trying to get people through the area as fast as efficiently as they could,” said Mark Teague, a private traffic engineer consultant in Waynesville.

That’s largely what led the town to pursue a feasibility study of its own. The independent feasibility study will cost $55,000, with 80 percent of the cost paid for with a federal planning grant.

Yount is pleased the town is rejecting the DOT’s feasibility study and doing one of its own.

“I think the DOT study is going to do nothing more than create another Russ Avenue and that’s the last thing this town needs,” Yount said. “The philosophy needs to change from ‘Let’s move cars as quickly as we can’ to ‘Let’s have smart transportation alternatives and livable streets.’ We may need to de-emphasize moving a single car from one point to another.”

To most, anything will be better than the status quo. South Main doesn’t exactly look the part of a booming commercial district. It is pockmarked by boarded-up windows, weed-engulfed parking lots, cracked pavement — even concertina wire around one windowless cinder block building.

“That is not what Waynesville is all about,” said Ron Reid, the owner of Andon-Reid Bed and Breakfast. “That corridor just needs help. It needs to be cleaned up.”

Reid winces to think about tourists coming to Waynesville for the first time via South Main.

Reid, also a member of the town’s planning board, wants the usual pedestrian-friendly features of street trees, sidewalks, perhaps a planted median.

“I really envision something halfway between what Russ Avenue is and what our downtown district is,” Reid said.

Bull by the horns

Fred Baker, the town’s public works director, said the DOT’s feasibility study doesn’t live up to the town’s design standards.

For example, the town requires a row of street trees in between the sidewalk and road, while the DOT plan puts the trees on the far side of the sidewalk. The rationale: so swerving cars don’t run into the trees. But surely that’s better than hitting pedestrians, Baker said.

It might seem like a small detail, but whether street trees go between the sidewalk and road rather than the far side of the sidewalk speaks volumes to the road’s character.

“It gives you that sense of security on the sidewalk that you could relax,” Baker said.

There’s several points like this where the DOT’s proposed design diverges from the town’s street standards.

Waynesville’s standards call for bike lanes, but the DOT left them out, instead making the outside car lane a couple of feet wider so bicycles can “share the road.”

Another incongruity: Waynesville’s standards call for ?-feet-wide sidewalk but the DOT’s plan called for only ? feet.

Baker said he will lobby hard for the town’s higher standards.

But the DOT may ask the town to foot the bill for these as perks. When the town wanted a multi-use path included in the widening of Howell Mill Road a few years ago, hoping to fill in a missing gap of the Richland Creek greenway, the DOT told the town it would have to pick up the tab for the extra right-of-way required for a multiuse path. It was half a million the town didn’t have, Baker said.

“Ultimately when DOT starts buying right-of-way, it charges the town for the extra width for all these things,” Baker said.

Baker hopes that will change by the time a South Main makeover becomes a reality, citing the complete streets movement that is infiltrating the DOT.

More lanes will make it harder to also squeeze in the town’s desired bike lanes, wider sidewalks, a planting strip with street trees

“It would be nice if we could get away with three lanes,” Benson said.

All in the numbers

But ultimately, whatever plan the town comes up with will need DOT buy-in, since the DOT holds the road-building purse strings.

DOT will have to be convinced that the road is wide enough to handle projected traffic, Benson said. Benson is anxious to get a look at the latest traffic counts for South Main, being conducted as part of the town’s process.

Those traffic counts — data on not just the number of cars moving along the road, but also where they are turning in and out — will be used to predict future traffic, which in turn will make or break the number of lanes.

Mark Teague, a traffic engineer consultant who used to work for the DOT, has been conducting counts up and the down the road for weeks in preparation for the public design workshop next week.

The real heavy lifting, however, will be coming up with a road design that amalgamates everyone’s visions.

“We are serving a lot of different groups, the residents who live and work on the road, the people who drive on it, bikes and pedestrians. We have a lot of different groups of people who are unrelated,” Teague said. “It is a balance.”

Share your vision

A community brainstorming session to gather ideas and visions for South Main Street in Waynesville will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 20.

“Residents all throughout Waynesville use this space,” said Rodney Porter, a consultant with La Quatra Bonci, facilitating the town’s new street plan for South Main. “When the public is in charge of what they want to see their roads look like, the outcome is a little bit better.”

Drop in anytime between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to explore maps and road images and offer comments during an open charette-style planning session. Porter will give a presentation on the project starting at 8:30 a.m., and at 9:30 a.m. there will be a design workshop to kick off the charette session.

Held at the West Waynesville Campus of Haywood Community College on South Main (the old Dayco Union Hall across the street from the Verizon Wireless store.)

828.456.2004 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The Waynesville Gallery Association will present Art After Dark from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 2, in downtown Waynesville.

Art After Dark takes place the first Friday of each month, May through December. Patrons can stroll through working studios and galleries on Main Street, Depot Street and in Historic Frog Level. Art After Dark flags denote participating galleries. Steve Whiddon will provide music on the street.

Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery 86 is hosting its newest exhibition, “Donna Rhodes: All Over The Map” celebrating the wide artistic range and whimsy of artist and Tuscola High art teacher, Donna Rhodes.

Twigs and Leaves Gallery will be featuring clay jewelry artist, Jody Funk. Funk will be demonstrating her work in clay.

Gallery 262 is showing the works of Jere Smith and Dan Wright. Smith is a woodworker and furniture maker and Wright is a stained glass artist.

828.452.9284 or www.waynesvillegalleryassociation.com.

Artist draws on lifetime of experience for new show

An exhibition of artist Donna Rhodes’ work called All Over the Map will run through Sept. 17 at the Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery 86 in downtown Waynesville. An opening reception will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. on Sept. 2.

The show is a visual journey that criss-crosses the multi-media landscape Rhodes’ unique view of the world.

She holds a degree in music in addition to being a professional artist and art instructor at Tuscola High School, a writer and photographer and a staff writer for The Laurel Magazine in Highlands. She is currently working on three children’s books.

For more information, call 828.452.0593 or visit www.haywoodarts.org.

Electric car owners rejoice. Haywood County may soon be home to two electric car charging stations for the sustainably inclined.

The idea is still in its infancy, but the town of Waynesville hopes to house two of 25 charging stations being set up in the five-county Asheville metro area, a project partially funded through a grant from the state Energy Office. Clean Vehicles Coalition and Advanced Energy are coordinating the grant and are in the process of deciding which locations in the region will get the public charging stations.

If approved, the grant would offer 50 percent of costs for the new technology, up to $6,000 per charging station.

The public parking deck in downtown Waynesville would be an ideal spot for electric car charging stations, according to Waynesville’s Assistant Town Manager Alison Melnikova.

Drivers would be able to charge their cars free of charge — helpful both to tourists traveling in electric vehicles or commuters who want to juice up. The stations also would be available for local governments, should they decide to go electric with fleets in the future.

The N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles expects nearly 12,000 electric vehicles to be on the state’s roads by 2015, with 10 percent of those in the Asheville metro area.

The idea to house charging stations in the parking deck still faces a couple of hurdles.

County commissioners, as the owners of the parking deck, must agree to the location. The town plans to approach commissioners at their meeting next week.

Waynesville and the county have already agreed to share the local portion of the project, including the cost of the match, with each government pitching in half, according to information presented to the Waynesville Town Board last week.

Advance Energy said that decisions on applications would be made by Sept. 9, and if approved, the new stations could be up as early as December.

Melnikova said that final prices haven’t yet been worked out, so just how much the town and county would have to lay down is unclear.

The stations will power cars such as the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. They’re not inexpensive — the Volt will set you back between $33,000 and $41,000, while the Leaf has a price tag of around $37,000 — but their makers tout the significant fuel savings the cars could provide.

The Leaf takes about $1.50 a day to run, says Nissan. And with complimentary charging stations, that cost could decrease.

There are already charging stations at the Biltmore Town Square in south Asheville, built by Eaton Corp., a company in Arden that produces the stations.

Waynesville has one chance to get South Main Street right, or live with the consequences for decades to come. And the town isn’t taking any chances. The N.C. Department of Transportation had barely gotten started on a feasibility study for a street makeover when the town began hunting for grants to do its own independent yet simultaneous feasibility study.

The community has to speak up on the front end to let DOT know what it wants, said Mayor Gavin Brown.

“There is a default button over there and they will hit it,” Brown said. “That’s what I want to avoid. I want to make sure we have input into the process when DOT finally gets around to doing something.”

There’s a lot riding on a South Main makeover. It will dictate what Waynesville’s west side becomes. Will West Waynesville become the next West Asheville, transforming into a hip walkable community, albeit three decades from now? Or will it follow in the footsteps of Russ Avenue, a high-traffic commercial hotbed?

“We want to create a place that is a destination — a place that can be called a place and not just a street or a bypass,” said Rodney Porter, a consultant hired by the town to steer the feasibility study. “It is nice to look at public streets as public spaces. When we do that, we really can sort of revive a community based on a streetscape.”

But as a key gateway into town, South Main currently leaves a lot to be desired, said Porter, an urban designer with LaQuatra Bonci in Asheville.

“I don’t know if South Main right now is the character of Waynesville,” Porter said. “I think we can really change the voice of what this street is saying.”

Paul Benson, Waynesville’s town planner, didn’t put it quite so tactfully.

“It is so blighted right now, it is like a third-world country,” Benson said.

The street is pocked by vacant buildings with boarded up windows, and a crop of litter-strewn, weed-speckled parking lots.

Porter said it’s not terribly difficult to transform the status quo, however. A few tricks of the trade can make a big impact: trees edging the street, sidewalks and bike lanes, a planted median, clusters of benches — simply marked crosswalks would be a start.

“A strong design will give a sense of place on the street,” Porter said.

But all these niceties add up, with the street’s footprint inching wider and wider all the while. There’s five feet for each bike lane, six for each sidewalk, five for a planted tree strip, at least 17 feet for a median. The road quickly balloons to a 100-foot swath, and that’s where the rubber will likely meet the road, Benson said.

The wider the footprint, the more property gets gobbled up. In some cases, when it comes to the dilapidated buildings and vagrant parking lots, seeing them go might not be such a bad thing.

But South Main is also home to long-standing businesses that could be wiped out if the new street gets too wide.

“Does it sacrifice those of us who are in that route to get there?” asked David Blevins, owner of the gas station across from Super Wal-Mart. “There are people who do make a living from those rundown gas stations and I was curious how they will reconcile that.”

South Main is also the lifeblood for nearby neighborhoods: the upscale Waynesville Country Club, middle-class Auburn Park, and the many tightly packed, working class neighborhoods that radiate through West Waynesville, testament to its bustling mill village days when factories dominated the blue-collar side of town.

A wider road will push commercial development back and up against the edge of these neighborhoods.

“I don’t want to impact that community more adversely than it has to,” said Waynesville Mayor Gavin Brown. “My preference would be smaller so it wouldn’t impact the neighborhoods.”

Benson said middle ground might actually be simple. Usually, commercial interests are the chief lobby for wider roads. But in this case, the businessmen fear the front of their lots being lopped off too much.

“The people who want the widest road are also the people who don’t want as much of their property taken,” Benson said. “I think it will be easy to find middle ground on this project. It is so bad right now that anyone will welcome any kind of improvement.”

But there will be choices to make. It might not be possible to add lanes, plus a planted median, street trees, bike lines and sidewalks on both sides. Which make the cut will likely be the subject of debate as the planning process plays out.

Plus, the DOT has some flexibility to narrow lanes and narrow the median, making them smaller than the standard — deviating from that default that Mayor Brown referred to. But those are mere kinks, and not the purpose of the feasibility study.

“You can make those choices later,” said Derek Lewis, DOT road planner in Raleigh overseeing the DOT’s South Main feasibility study. “We don’t get that deep into the weeds in the feasibility study. A feasibility study is at a 40,000 foot level shooting down while still being as context sensitive as we can.”

Input wanted

The town kicked-off the planning process for South Main three weeks ago with a community meeting.

Property owners along South Main and existing business owners dominated the table. But Porter wants regular folks in the mix, too.

“Not just business owners but residents all throughout Waynesville use this space,” Porter said. “We want to make sure we are doing the right thing for this corridor as a whole and not just particular individuals. We want a strong public process.”

Nancy Felder, a resident who travels South Main everyday, sees a street makeover as the key to a better community.

“We’re interested in seeing things revitalized in this area,” Felder said.

The nearby Waynesville Country Club is among the players vested in South Main’s makeover.

“This South Main Street traffic flow is totally critical to our business,” said David Stubbs, co-owner of the Waynesville Country Club.

The independent feasibility study will cost $55,000, with 80 percent of the cost paid for with a federal planning grant.

When looking for the right consultant, town leaders wanted a firm that understood new urbanism and valued multimodal streets, incorporating pedestrian and bikes.

“We wanted a progressive plan,” Benson said.

Porter said his firm would take a holistic view of the street makeover.

Primed for growth?

Even before Super Wal-Mart opened in 2008, property owners eagerly erected For Sale signs accompanied by staggering asking prices.

But the commercial boom the community was both hoping for and bracing for has yet to materialize.

While property in the Super Wal-Mart development itself has moved — a Verizon, Best Buy, car wash, beauty supply store, and soon a Belk’s, Pet Smart and Michael’s — the rest of the property owners along South Main found they weren’t sitting on quite the goldmine they thought.

Commercial property values only rose 8 percent along South Main Street since the Super Wal-Mart came in, according to the recent property reappraisal conducted by the county.

Benson said the recession has merely delayed inevitable commercial growth on South Main, not sidelined it permanently.

“I think the national economy right now is what is going to keep that area from developing more,” Benson said.

For at least 15 years, a South Main makeover has been at the top of Waynesville’s road wish list. But it was the coming of Super Wal-Mart gave South Main a needed push to get the DOT’s attention.

A makeover was no longer a purely aesthetic undertaking, but the promise of commercial growth would mean more cars, and the element of traffic congestion now warranted an examination by the DOT.

The DOT in 2009 launched a feasibility study of the street. When exactly DOT will get around to redoing South Main isn’t clear. For now, it’s not in the DOT’s 10-year plan.

And while congestion is becoming a problem, until it gets worse, the project may not be considered a priority by the DOT.

How congested does it have to get before DOT will tackle the makeover?

“That is the $64,000 question,” said Benson. “As congestion get worse it will rank higher and become a higher priority to build.”

Yet without a street makeover, commercial growth might not materialize as quickly, posing a chicken and egg conundrum. Porter said a nicer street, if built, would help attract commercial development and investment.

“If we improve the street life will we have changes in development?” Porter asked. “That is what we are looking for: how can we re-energize this street.”

Mayor Brown believes that commercial growth will come regardless of whether the makeover happens now or later.

“The business people will go wherever they can to make dollars. If they see an opportunity to make money, they will do it whether there is a new road or not,” Brown said.

But, the town will soon have a plan on paper at least, giving prospective developers an idea of what they can expect to happen one day, Brown said, even if it might be a long time off.

“Once a businessman knows that, he will build accordingly,” Brown said.

Which is why Brown wanted to hire a consultant to come up with a makeover plan, even if it will be a decade or more before it earns a spot at the top of the DOT’s build list.

“Is it an exercise in futility?” Brown asked. “No, it will benefit the community as a whole.”

Meanwhile, the DOT has put the final version of its feasibility study on hold to see what the town and its consultant come up with.

Waynesville and Sylva are at a crossroads, ones that will irrevocably shape the character of their communities.

Both towns are clamoring for a makeover of their commercial avenues — South Main Street in Waynesville and N.C. 107 in Sylva — but neither likes the plans that the N.C. Department of Transportation came up with.

Instead, both communities want to do their own street plans, drawing from new urbanist philosophies that use street design as a springboard for creating vibrant and lively shopping districts where not only cars but people feel at home.

But traffic is a fact of life, and whether the communities can marry the needs of the thoroughfares with their lofty visions remains to be seen.

Read more:

• Waynesville primed for makeover of South Main

• Fast for cars or pleasing for people? Tug of war rages over 107

• The advent of the boulevard, the death of the five-lane

• A look in the rearview at N.C. 107

The town of Waynesville is dusting off the drafting table, ready to launch a community planning initiative to shape the future look and feel of South Main Street.

The area has been primed for growth by the recent addition of Waynesville Commons, where Best Buy and Super Wal-Mart are located, and Belk’s is soon to move. Plans for upgrading the roads dated appearance and reconfiguring it to handle more traffic have been in the works for several years.

The town has now received a grant to launch a plan for the corridor from the French Broad River Metropolitan Organization.

A public interest meeting will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 28, at the Town of Waynesville satellite office on Brown Avenue in Hazelwood.

The town has hired a consulting team to develop a corridor plan that will forecast future travel demand and to propose a roadway design.

Final designs could include extra lanes, intersection redesigns to accommodate existing and projected traffic, sidewalks or landscaped medians.

When the topic was debated two years ago and a feasibility study was done by the DOT, three options were proffered as solutions for the road.

One would keep the same two-lane structure, another would add a middle turn lane and the most drastic would create a four-lane, boulevard-type affair, with a raised median, street trees and bike lanes. This last option would call for a 120-foot right-of-way, essentially razing the buildings on either side of the street.

At the time, public opinion was split on the issue. Since the feasibility study was completed, no major steps have been taken on the corridor plan.

In addition to being a professional study of travel demand and facility design, the planning process is expected to engage stakeholders including the property owners and business owners, representatives of NCDOT and the community as a whole in a the future design of the area.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation draft feasibility study is available at the Town of Waynesville’s Website, www.townofwaynesville.org.

Since 1917, the Red Cross has flown its archetypal white flag in Haywood County. In the 94 years that have since passed, the charity’s presence in the county has been steadily dwindling. First, the Waynesville chapter disappeared. Then the Canton chapter fell by the wayside.

The weight fell on what became the Haywood County chapter of the Red Cross, but now that last holdout is looking at closing its doors as well.

“Our chapter has been struggling financially for several years,” said Kim Czaja, the chapter’s financial director, who will be out of a job in September.

They’ve made some pretty hefty strides in the last few years — cutting the yearly debt from $28,000 down to just around $2,000 — but it just wasn’t enough.

Really, though, said Czaja, what’s happening to Haywood is just a snapshot of a very turbulent climate in the Red Cross around the country.

Chapters in Cincinnati are merging to save money, Buffalo is slashing 50 jobs in their blood division and the agency said it’s cutting administrative jobs, consolidating things like payroll and accounting, which are currently done by each chapter.

“There are layoffs going on throughout the Red Cross as a whole,” said Czaja. “It’s just a change right now, and I’ll be honest with you, it’s like any change, it can be painful but it is a very good thing because it’s definitely going to make the Red Cross stronger.”

Some of the services the local chapter offers will also go through an evolution, probably being administered out of the regional office in Asheville.

The western region of the state has seven Red Cross chapters. Haywood County was the only one west of Asheville, and it’s been that way for years, said Czaja.

“We want to continue to be strong in the community, but it is going to be different,” said Czaja.

She estimates that they serve around 7,000 to 8,000 people every year. That includes all the classes — CPR, first aid, swim and lifeguard courses — blood drives, water safety classes in schools, helping businesses craft emergency plans and local versions of the disaster assistance the Red Cross is known for globally.

They also offer financial help to military families and get them in touch with service members overseas when there’s an emergency at home.

The restructuring is a new proposition; Czaja, who is only part-time and the chapter’s only paid employee, just learned of the changes last week. So that means she’s not yet sure how or when the fallout will actually fall.

“There’s a lot of fear because the doors may be closing,” said said. But she’s hopeful that the group’s role in the community won’t diminish and that they can continue serving the county through volunteers. She started as a volunteer herself.

“I understand decisions like this have to be made,” said Czaja. “The most important thing is that the services continue.”

In one gallery in Waynesville this month, the nations of the world will gather. While the international dance and song of Folkmoot will take their traditional place in Haywood County’s summer calendar, this year international art will also make an appearance at “The World Around Us,” a show put on by the Haywood Arts Council in Gallery 86 on Main Street in Waynesville.

The show runs through July 30 and features works from seven artists from across Europe and Central America. Their works range in scope, including painters, weavers, photographers and mixed-media artists.

Sylvia Williams

Silvia Williams is a native of Cuba, and the warm Spanish lilt remains in her voice and laugh, though she hasn’t lived there in more than 50 years. Williams spent much of her career as a foreign language teacher, at universities and in public and private schools. But her dream, and now her career, was in abstract art.

“I had a sort-of drawing talent and little by little, I just kept on painting and just recently I feel like I became what I wanted to be and that is an abstract painter,” said Williams. She’s not always been a North Carolinian — she and her husband moved here from Florida around 10 years ago — but the state has been intertwined through her life.

“I feel kind of fated to North Carolina from the beginning,” said Williams. “I came here to school in my early teens and then I married this North Carolinian, I went to the University of North Carolina. North Carolinians, especially westerns, remind me a lot of Cubans.”

Though she said her Cuban heritage doesn’t have a direct effect on the watermedia pieces she produces today, at least one piece of her Caribbean culture still shines through.

“I imagine that the thing that perhaps that could have influenced that is that I love color so much and my painting is a lot about color,” said Williams.

She’s learned her craft over the years through classes, workshops, books and the unrivalled teacher that is hands-on experience.

Today, her process isn’t mapped out in steps, but intuited along the way.

“I never have a definite plan, it just evolves from there,” said Williams. “If I plan something … that’s when it dies.”

Her best pieces, she said, have evolved in that way. And those are the ones she chooses when deciding what to put in shows. If she likes it, it goes.

And for Williams, it’s a good system. The ones she sells are usually the ones she loves.

Williams’ work can be seen at Gallery 86 and also at Gallery 262 in Frog Level.

Yvonne Van der Meer Lappas

Yvonne Van der Meer Lappas has lived an international life. That’s how she describes her journey from Amsterdam to Clyde, with many global stops in between.

Lappas has been an artist her whole life, studying at Paris’ L’Ecole des Beaus Arts at the Sorbonne after finishing school in the Netherlands.

Then, however, she turned her artistry to industry, working in fashion design for 16 years.

Her career took her to all of the usual hot spots for haute couture — New York, Paris, Rome — but didn’t quite fulfill her need for artistic expression.

“That was just making a living and fashion is very demanding,” said Lappas. But she squeezed the painting in at night, taking workshops and classes at the Art Student’s League in New York and studying the techniques of Rudolph Steiner and his watercolor veil paintings.

Then she and her husband moved to Clyde around 20 years ago, and she leapt into not only her own artistry, but the area’s vibrant artistic community.

“It is totally different from New York City, where everything is high dollar and big art shows and big money,” said Lappas, mentioning craft schools like Penland that feature traditional artistry that isn’t often seen in larger urban areas. “It is very charming to see how much interest there is in art here. It really is no wonder that people like to come here.”

When asked what has kept Lappas involved in her own creations and the artistic scene throughout the years, she replies as though that is, of course, a foregone conclusion.

“It’s a lifeline for me, it’s a voice that I have to follow. Any artist could tell you that. It’s a must. You have to get it out of you.”

No more schlepping those empty drink bottles or cans home after a day of browsing in downtown Waynesville.

A dozen recycling containers will soon be scattered around Main Street and its surrounds.

The town made the move purchase and install recycling cans based on requests from merchants as well as residents, according to Alison Lee Melnikova, the assistant town manager.

Melnikova scouted the streets and sidewalks with Downtown Waynesville Association Director Buffy Messer recently to assess where to put the new containers, but the final locations are still being decided.

The recycling containers will look similar to the public trash cans around downtown, with the vertical wood slats, but will be dark green in color and are actually made from recycled plastic, although they look like wood, Melnikova said. The recycling containers will cost the town $5,000.

For special events and festivals, DWA put out portable recycling cans, but the rest of the year, Main Street browsers faced the unfortunate conundrum of what to do with those recyclables — either toting a sticky can around or guiltily tossing it when it seems no one is looking.

Cans should be in place by early August.

The contest to fill Waynesville’s town board has drawn a wide crowd this year, a mixture of incumbents, political newcomers and a couple of election veterans.

Seven candidates will vie for four seats in the November election. The town board hasn’t seen an upset in the last two elections.

Sitting Aldermen Gary Caldwell, J. Wells Greeley and Leroy Roberson are all coming back for another try, and given the track record of incumbents in Waynesville elections, the odds seem in their favor. But at least one seat is wide open, as Alderwoman Libba Feichter is not returning for re-election, likely fueling some of the competition entering the race.

The challengers represent a variety of views, some business owners, some retirees, some public servants, but nearly all named the economy and the replacement of retiring Town Manager Lee Galloway as top priorities in the coming term.

Only one, Sam Edwards, expressed open discontent with the current administration, with the rest either backing the board’s positions or staying mum on the issue.

Among the challengers for town board, none are returning from the 2007 contest, however, Mayor Gavin Brown will face competition from Hugh Phillips, assistant manger of Bi-Lo, who ran unsuccessfully against him four years ago.

The general election will be held on November 8. Voter registration closes on October 14.

Gary Caldwell

Age: 58

Occupation: Production manager at Cornerstone Printing in Waynesville.

Time in Waynesville: Caldwell is a lifelong Waynesville resident.

Political Experience: Currently a sitting board member, Caldwell has served four consecutive terms as a Waynesville alderman.

Why he is running: “I just enjoyed being in city government. I just really love it.”

Biggest challenge in the next term: “My challenge is completing the skate park. I’m halfway there. We’ve raised probably close to $160,000 of the $300,000 that we’re trying to raise to break ground on it, and that’s been my goal probably for the past 10 years. Finally we’ve got it really going on great.”

Sam Edwards

Age: 57

Occupation: Clergyman. Edwards spent two decades with the Episcopal church before becoming vicar at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Waynesville. He is now waiting to be received into the Catholic church.

Time in Waynesville: He lived in Waynesville through high school and returned in 2007.

Political Experience: Edwards unsuccessfully ran as a Republican against N.C. Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill.

Why he is running: “I’d been concerned, with a bunch of other citizens, that the current administration in Waynesville is not providing a good climate for small businesses. I thought it was time to give the people a choice.”

What he’d bring to the new board: “Making do with less. We’re going to have to prioritize our budget and wisely spend the public’s money.”

Mary Ann Enloe

Age: 70

Occupation: Retired from Dayco after 37 years, most recently as the senior purchasing agent.

Time in Waynesville: Enloe is a lifelong Waynesville resident.

Political Experience: Enloe was the mayor of Hazelwood, a Haywood County commissioner for two terms and ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for N.C. House in 2000. She currently serves on the Haywood County Board of Equalization and Review and the Haywood County Fairgrounds Board. She has never run for office in Waynesville.

Why she is running: “It’s my love for this area. I live in the house I grew up in and I just have a real love for the area and a real understanding of how government has to work.”

Biggest challenge facing the new board: “I don’t know that it will be the biggest but it will certainly be at the top, will be hiring the new town manager.”

Julia Boyd Freeman

Age: 44

Occupation: Executive Director of REACH of Haywood County, a non-profit that deals with domestic violence.

Time in Waynesville: She is a lifelong resident.

Political Experience: Freeman has never run for public office, but sits on the Haywood County Department of Social Services Board and the North Carolina Domestic Violence Commission.

Why she is running: “For some time I’ve had an interest in public service and also in serving the community. I’ve got a vested interest in the community from a business standpoint, and there’s going to be a lot of changes in the town coming up in the next couple of years.”

Why she would make a good alderwoman: “I think I bring a youthful perspective, a younger generation connecting with the people. My desire to serve the community and work with diverse populations could make a big difference.”

Wells Greeley

Age: 59

Occupation: Owner of Wells Funeral Home, with locations in Waynesville and Canton.

Time in Waynesville: Greeley is a lifelong Haywood County resident, and has also lived in Canton.

Political Experience: Greeley is currently an alderman. He was appointed to fill the unexpired term of the late Kenneth Moore. He was also an alderman in Canton from 1981 to 1985.

Why he is running: “I did make the commitment when I accepted the appointment to run again, so I’m following through with my word.”

Biggest challenge of his previous term: “I knew it was going to be challenging and I have been pleasantly surprised with how well the town board works together.”

Ron Reid

Age: 55

Occupation: Owner of the Andon Reid Inn, a Waynesville bed-and-breakfast. Reid had a law enforcement career and was a health fitness consultant before becoming an inn-keeper in his retirement.

Time in Waynesville: He and his wife moved to Waynesville from the West Palm Beach, Fl., area in 2006.

Political Experience: This is his first run for public office, but has previously served on the board of the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority. He is currently on the board of directors at the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce.

Why he is running: “I’ve got a vision for the community. I like what the town is doing, I like the direction it’s been going in. I wanted  to be a part of that team.”

His top priorities for the next term: “The main thing is the economics. How are we going to keep the young people here, what’s going to be attractive to new businesses? Along with keeping the mountain Appalachian heritage and history. I would hate to see Waynesville just become anytown USA. People come here for a reason. We have to be progressive, manage smartly, but not forget what made Waynesville what it is.”

Leroy Roberson

Age: 67

Occupation: Optometrist at Haywood Optometric Care in Waynesville.

Time in Waynesville: Roberson is a lifelong resident of Waynesville.

Political Experience: He is completing a four-year term on the board and was elected as an alderman once in the past.

Why he is running: “Basically, I enjoy doing it. I think there’s still some things that need to be done, and maybe touch up on the land development standards.”

Greatest success of the current term: “Considering the financial difficulties that have presented themselves, we’ve been able to maintain the services and the town, I think, is being run quite well.”

Charlie Burgin had registered as a candidate last week, but has since decided not to run.