South Main Street is a mess.

That’s the message from a consultant hired by the town of Waynesville to develop a revitalization plan for the struggling artery.

The consultant spent six months studying South Main and developing a master street plan. The challenges are great, based on the less-than-flattering language that peppers his report: deteriorated condition; not economically healthy; dilapidated structures; no distinct image; scrubby patches of overgrown and unattractive weeds; seldom pedestrian traffic; high vacancy rate.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to deliver such blunt news, Waynesville Town Planner Paul Benson said. Locals come to accept the status quo, and may not realize how bad it actually looks. Besides, the slow decline of South Main happened over decades, making the changes less noticeable until it became a blight on the town.

SEE ALSO: A bold fix for South Main Street

Many South Main property owners salivated over the coming of Super Walmart and Best Buy, putting their lots and businesses on the market before the big-box development had even broken ground. Four years later, they are still waiting for the land rush, wondering why Applebee’s hasn’t come knocking yet.

The answer is because South Main Street simply doesn’t look good, according to Rodney Porter, the corridor consultant who works for LaQuatra Bonci in Asheville.

“One of the challenges to this corridor is how do we make the road itself more accessible and pedestrian friendly. The other is how do we address the economic downturn of this corridor,” Porter said.

Luckily, the solution happens to be one and the same, he said.

“If you can design a road that is pedestrian friendly you can generate a more successful corridor,” Porter said. “A simple change of image will provide a new address for economic investment.”

The same elements that would make the road attractive to pedestrians — sidewalks, curbs, street trees, crosswalks, benches, a landscape median — will make it attract to commercial development, Porter contends.

“Pedestrian traffic is a critical ingredient to revitalizing a corridor,” Porter said. “It is critical to have this corridor be inviting and provide a sense of safety and welcome.”

Failure to do so could forever sentence South Main to its destitute status, according to Porter’s assessment. Traffic on South Main Street has actually declined over the past three years, according to traffic counts taken by the DOT shortly after Super Walmart opened and new traffic counts taken by Porter’s team.

“More people are actually going around South Main Street to get to Walmart. They are just hopping off the exit,” Porter said.

They aren’t being drawn to South Main, and instead opt to hop on and off the adjacent highway to get to Walmart. Until South Main’s appearance improves and lures more traffic, new businesses won’t be motivated to follow suit, Porter said.

“Until you set the stage with a new road coming in, there is no incentives for redevelopment along that road,” Porter said.

Benson agrees with the premise: make the street attractive and inviting, people and businesses will follow.

“It needs to be a more attractive environment,” Benson said. “That will be a key to promote retail activity.”

It will take more than throwing in a row of trees along the road and putting in sidewalks, however.

The road itself is missing many of the bare essentials. It lacks curbs, with parking lot after parking lot morphing into the road. The net result: a giant plain of asphalt.

Porter said South Main’s character is defined by the “overwhelming presence of parking lots.”

In the quest to bring renewed life to South Main, the middle-class neighborhoods of Hazelwood will be critical, according to Porter.

“The lack of users on South Main Street has in part contributed to the dereliction of the corridor,” Porter said. “The adjacent residential population is no longer devoted to the commerce on South Main Street.”

Benson agreed on this point as well.

“The idea is to connect with the neighborhoods, to make it easy for those folks to walk or ride their bike or drive to the corridor. A lot of it is based on a complete street concept that all users should feel comfortable on the corridor, not just the cars and trucks,” Benson said.

What’s next?

Porter was hired by the town to develop a proposed plan for South Main Street as a community-driven alternative to another plan devised by the N.C. Department of Transportation.

The DOT plan was less nuanced and more utilitarian. It calls for a wider road with fewer pedestrian features — concrete rather than planted medians, no dedicated bike lanes, narrower sidewalks and more lanes.

The town felt it wasn’t in keeping with its vision for South Main, and that’s largely what prompted the town to undertake an independent master plan.

“This is definitely a more tailored approach than the DOT study,” Benson said.

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

Two community workshops were held to engage the public in creating the plan. Property owners, businessmen, as well as average residents, turned out to voice their vision for the corridor.

The town is now hoping the public will voice its opinions again now that a draft plan is on the table. A meeting to solicit input will be at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, at the new Waynesville town hall building.

Porter said “community consensus” is important to the success of the plan.

Based on the feedback, the consultant will finalize the plan before its adopted by the town. The town will then present its plan to the DOT in hopes of seeing the features it wants incorporated.

The DOT has cautioned that its feasibility study of South Main wasn’t intended as a detailed street design.

“It is not the Bible. It is not the final word on what is going to happen,” said Derrick Lewis, DOT road planner in Raleigh overseeing the DOT’s South Main feasibility study. “As a project moves thru the planning and design stages, the number of lanes, as well as the intersection configuration and design are always up for discussion based upon updated information and community input.”

The feasibility study took a broad look at how to best accommodate projected traffic 25 years from now. Details would not be hammered out in the final design stage.

Lewis said the DOT will listen to the town’s recommendations and decide whether to incorporate any of them. The DOT’s feasibility study is still considered in draft form.

“We put it in the holding pattern to see if there are any magic bullets come out of this study,” Lewis said.

Benson hopes the DOT will be receptive.

“I’m hoping he will look at this and won’t have any problem with what we came up with,” Benson said.

Based on a surface reading of the town’s plan, Lewis noticed several design features that may not jive with DOT street standards.

Want to weigh in?

Public input is sought on a plan to makeover South Main Street in Waynesville. A proposal to turn it into a vibrant, tree-line boulevard with pedestrian appeal will be presented at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17, at the new Waynesville town hall building.

Ideas and critiques from the public will be solicited. To view the plan click here.

Haywood County has offered a helping hand as towns grapple with how to cover the extra cost of hauling resident’s trash to the White Oak Landfill.

Starting in July, towns will have to drive trash out to the White Oak landfill near the Tennessee border. Currently, the towns transport their garbage to a transfer station in Clyde, a convenient mid-way point, and the county takes it the rest of the way to landfill. But, the county has decided to shut down the station to save money.

Rather than leaving towns in the lurch, the county will share some of the savings it realizes with the towns to help offset a portion of the extra cost they would otherwise incur.

“We want to try to minimize any negative impact,” said Mark Swanger, chair of the Haywood County Board of Commissioners. “We knew that it would likely create additional costs.”

The money will come out off the $800,000 to $900,000 in savings the county will realize after it closes the transfer station.

“There will be sufficient savings to help the municipalities,” Swanger said. “I think they are very amenable to it.”

It is unknown how much the county will chip in.

“Any amount that would reduce our costs would help,” said Waynesville Town Manager Lee Galloway.

The extra driving distance to the landfill will mean more gas and more hours for town trash trucks. Towns could also be forced to buy additional trucks and hire more garbage men as a result.

Realizing the additional burden it would place on towns, the county held off on closing the transfer station until summer to align with the new budget year. The county has been working through the issue with towns for more than a year.

“The cooperation between the county and towns is really important,” said David Francis, chair of the county’s solid waste committee. “We knew that it was going to be a change in the way they operate.”

The county wanted to avoid changing “all the sudden” and give towns a chance to figure how they will handle the change, he said.

The county realizes that town residents are also county residents, Francis said, and wanted to ease the burden on towns and hopefully avoid a situation where the towns would need to pass the added cost onto their residents.

The county’s scales at the transfer station have helped show towns that their garbage trucks were often not filled to capacity when dropping trash, Francis said. If the trucks carried heavier loads, they could take fewer trips to the landfill and possibly avoid the cost of new truck.

The towns are currently tabulating how much each option would cost them and must present their estimates to the county by Jan. 15. The county will decide how much it will give to the towns in May as it constructs its budget.

Lloyd Arneach likes to make people cry.

“That means they understand the stories I am telling,” said Arneach, a 68-year-old storyteller from Cherokee. “A superb storyteller in one program can make you laugh, make you think and move you to tears.”

Arneach’s story starts in the 1970s in Georgia with a request from his children’s babysitter. She could not find any books about American Indians to present to an area Girl Scout Troop and so asked Arneach to speak to them.

At the time, he worked as a computer programmer, and when he arrived at the meeting, he sat casually in his three-piece suit as the girls anxiously awaited the appearance of a real-life Indian in full regalia.

“When I started talking to them, their jaws dropped,” Arneach said.

That first appearance turned into a second Girl Scout gig, until Arneach eventually found himself telling stories at Georgia Tech, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.

“It’s been incredible all the places storytelling has taken me,” he said.

One such place was the Festival of Fires, an all-Indian event during the Olympics in Atlanta where he met record-breaking Olympian Billy Mills, the only American ever to win a gold medal in the 10,000-meter run.

“Billy Mills to me is what an Olympic champs should be,” Arneach said, calling him a gracious individual.

People seem willing to hand parts of their lives to Arneach, who preserves each memory.

A friend dressed in traditional Indian garb once told Arneach about speaking at a large event in Washington when a woman approached, asking who his people were and asking to take his picture. Come to find out, the woman was former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

“It’s amazing the people who have sat and shared stories with me,” he said. “I feel very blessed the stories that have come to me.”

Arneach continued working as a computer programmer but told stories part-time. However, he eventually realized that most of his vacation time was spent guest-speaking at various festivals and events.

In 1993, Arneach, who had left Cherokee when he was 21, moved back to the reservation and became a full-time storyteller.

An Emotional Journey

There are several key components to the perfect storytelling experience.

“The sitting has to be correct,” Arneach said. “The audience has to be right.”

The venue must be silent, without the possibility of outside noise to detract from the performance, and the audience must be engaged. With these elements intact, Arneach need only gauge the crowd with one or two starter tales and then decide which narratives will receive the best response — should he stick to more lighthearted fare or is the audience emotionally ready to follow him into a more serious story.

“I never have a schedule when I go in story telling,” he said.

People are encouraged to relay the stories Arneach tells. Anecdotes are meant to be passed on, not hoarded in one’s memory, said Arneach, who is afraid that the art of storytelling will die with the older generations.

He tells a mixture of cultural and personal stories. Arneach chuckled as he recalled a visit to a 7-Eleven gas station. He had stopped at the convenience store earlier in the day.

He returned a second time, and the men working there asked his ethnicity. When they heard he was Native American, the men excitedly exclaimed ‘Wow, two in one day,’ not realizing that Arneach was the Native American from earlier.

His favorite story to tell, however, is Chief Joseph and the flight of the Nez Perce.

After attempting to resist efforts by U.S. soldiers to forcibly remove the tribe from its native lands in the 1800s, the band of Nez Perce fled to safety in Canada.

“I do not understand why that story affects me more than most,” Arneach said.

He requires about an hour to tell the story, but once he’s done, he cannot tell anymore.

“I am emotionally wiped out — both emotionally and physically,” Arneach said.

Hear him for yourself

Who: Lloyd Arneach

Where: Haywood County Public Library in Waynesville

When: 3 p.m., Jan. 16

By Kate Queen • Guest Columnist

At the beginning of December, Mountain Medical Associates, an established, multi-specialty internal medicine practice in Clyde, joined the MedWest Physician Network. Our new affiliation with MedWest is a continuation of Mountain Medical Associates’ longstanding commitment to provide high-quality healthcare in this community.

Mountain Medical Associates grew out of a practice founded in 1964 by Dr. Ralph Feichter, a Haywood County native whose medical training included work at the Mayo Clinic. That experience inspired him to develop a clinic here where physicians could collaborate to meet the needs of patients with complex medical problems, a model we believe has enhanced care as well as physician satisfaction.

Over the past nearly 50 years, Mountain Medical Associates has supported community healthcare initiatives throughout Haywood County. Dr. Feichter led the effort to relocate the hospital to its current central location in Clyde. The members of Mountain Medical Associates also played key roles in the development of the hospital Health and Fitness Center and the Osteoporosis Center, and continue to strive to build innovative programs on the hospital campus.

Mountain Medical Associates has 12 providers who specialize in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, gastroenterology, rheumatology and neurology. The current environment for recruiting new physicians with the level of knowledge and training we believe our patients deserve is challenging. Most recently trained physicians want the benefits of a formal affiliation with a health care system.

Becoming part of the MedWest Physician Network will help to attract high-quality health practitioners to serve this region and secure the presence of a multispecialty practice like ours in this community.

One of the other benefits to becoming part of the MedWest Physician Network will be the opportunity to use a unified electronic medical record system which will enhance our ability to offer seamless care and avoid the fragmented transfer of information and at times unnecessary duplication of testing that unfortunately has been part of usual care in this country

We want to assure our patients that our commitment to them will not change and that we will all continue to provide care in our current long-term location. We are welcoming patients seeking internal medicine providers and will continue to embrace our commitment to securing excellent health care for all of Haywood County.

(Dr. Kate T. Queen, M.D. has practiced rheumatology at Mountain Medical Associates for 25 years. She  received her M.D. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where she also did her residency in the Department of Medicine. Call 828.452.0331 or visit www.mountainmedicalassociates.com for more about the practice.)

Town residents in Haywood County will almost certainly see the cost of their garbage service go up this year when the county shuts down its central trash dump.

Starting in July, towns will have to haul their residents’ trash all the way out to the White Oak landfill, an added burden with no easy solution. The extra distance will mean more gas and more hours on the road for town trash trucks. Towns also could be forced to buy additional trucks and hire more garbage men as a result.

Towns in Haywood County will focus this month on how to deal with the closure of the county’s trash transfer station. The station serves as a mid-way drop-off site in Clyde where garbage trucks can ditch their loads. The county then piles that trash into a tractor-trailer and drives it the rest of the way to the landfill, a 30-minute one-way haul to White Oak near the Tennessee state line.

The county is closing the transfer station as a cost saving measure, forcing towns to pick up the trek to White Oak.  The change also applies to commercial garbage haulers and industries with large trash volumes. County residents, however, can continue to use one of the many convenience stations located throughout the county and will not have to haul their trash to White Oak.

Most towns are still analyzing the potential costs of their various options.

“We haven’t decided anything yet,” said Daryl Hannah, Waynesville’s Street Supervisor.

Hannah expects the town to make a decision in the next month, however.

Waynesville’s recycling dreams

Waynesville officials are hoping on recycling will reduce the amount of trash it has to haul to White Oak.

“Recycling will definitely help,” Hannah said. “It will not only help us but will help the landfill as well.”

More recycling means less trash that town trucks must haul to the landfill — which could partially offset the cost of additional trash trucks and garbage men while extending the life of the landfill.

About 60 percent of households in Waynesville recycle but only 5 percent of the garbage generated by the town is recycled.

While any increase in recycling will help, the town would need to reuse about half of its waste to negate the increased cost and workload of running its trash out to White Oak.

“I’m not sure we could recycle that much,” Galloway said.

One rationale for the low numbers — despite curbside recycling in town — is that people don’t know what is recyclable. What can be recycled by the county seemed to constantly change for a few years.

“Some people just got discouraged and quit all together,” Galloway said.

Other people simply did not want to buy the required blue-colored bags, which distinguish recyclables from refuse. Galloway said that Waynesville residents can also use clear bags for their recycled materials — as long as collectors can tell the difference between garbage and recyclables.

The town made an appeal to residents to ratchet up their recycling in the latest town newsletter but do not have a specific recycling campaign planned at this time.

“I just don’t know right now what more we can do (beyond public education efforts),” Galloway said.

The town is continuing to look at how other municipalities have successfully increased their recycling. Waynesville officials have talked to recycling companies, which would collect and promote recycling in town, and studied places that have upped their recycling numbers by charging residents a small fee.

It seems counterintuitive, but people will start recycling or increase their loads if they are automatically charged for the service, Galloway said, adding that he would rather not increase residents’ detritus fee.

Waynesville isn’t ruling out anything yet. It could end up being cheaper to haul town trash to a private landfill in Buncombe County. Or, Waynesville, Canton and Clyde have discussed operating their own transfer station, sharing the cost among themselves and private haulers rather than each making the long haul to White Oak individually.

But Galloway thinks running their own transfer station would likely be more trouble than its worth.

The Town of Waynesville will review recommendations on how it should handle its refuse at one of its town board meetings this month.

Although no town officials knew how much that would cost overall, Galloway said new garbage trucks cost about $180,000 a piece.

And, unless the landfill is upgraded, the towns will also be forking out a lot more truck repairs and maintenance. Currently, garbage trucks must navigate through piles of trash to dump their loads at the landfill. When a mild rain or snow makes the way impassable, trucks must be towed in and out of the landfill by bulldozers, which can damage the trucks.

Canton’s long haul

The Town of Canton is grappling with whether to privatize its town garbage service, outsourcing the town trash department to a private company. Town officials are currently analyzing their options, said Town Manager Al Matthews.

Canton is in a particular tough position because it is the farthest from the landfill — with an additional 40 miles round-trip — about an hour of time — added the journey of each trash truck.

The town currently takes at least three trips to the transfer station each day. That’s an extra three hours a day. The existing trash trucks and crews can’t fit those extra hours into their existing workweek and still make all 1,583 trash stops in town.

“We have some ideas what it will cost,” Matthews said.

On average, other towns pay $10 to $11 per stop, he said.

At those rates, Canton would have to shell out more than $180,000 a year for trash collection. The town’s trash budget is currently $185,000 a year. While privatizing trash pick-up wouldn’t necessarily save the town any money, it may avoid what will otherwise be an increase in costs when the town has to start hauling to White Oak.

Outsourcing garbage collection would require a one-time fee of about $125,000 to outfit each house in town with a standardized $80 garbage can.

Maggie Valley in the clear

Maggie Valley is the only town that does not have to worry about the transfer station closing thanks to the town’s geographic proximity to White Oak.

“It’s not much difference for us,” said Mike Mehaffey, Maggie Valley’s director of public works. “It’s not much farther to go to the landfill.”

The town contracts with Consolidated Waste Service to haul its trash and had already factored in the possibility that it might need to take the refuse a few extra miles. So, the flat fee rate Maggie Valley pays Consolidated Waste Service will remain the same — $7,529.05 per month.

The considerably smaller town of Clyde also contracts out its trash collection, but the change in dumping location could increase the contractor’s asking price. Compared to Maggie Valley, Clyde is considerably farther away from White Oak.

Prior to the county-level procedure change, Hanson Waste simply drove down the street to the county transfer station.

Town Administrator Joy Garland said Clyde officials are in the process of tabulating how much more the extra miles will cost and whether the town should put the job out for bid.

Clyde currently pays Hanson Waste $2,850 a month to dispose of its trash, Garland said. The number was based on an estimated 505 stops.

Why the trash talk?

Haywood County officials hope to save $800,000 a year by shutting down the county’s trash transfer station, a move that is two years in the making and will go into effect this July.

In addition to annual operating costs, the county would have faced a $1.8 million expense to replace the rusted and broken bailer, which compacts trash to fit as much as possible in a landfill-bound tractor-trailer.

The county commissioners argued that the transfer station only benefits those who have town trash pick-up or pay a private hauler. However, towns said that the closure creates a quandary for them and their residents. Town residents will still have to subsidize their trash disposal while county residents will not. Currently, both groups play $92 a year to use the landfill.

County residents who do not have trash pick up can drop their trash at one of 10 convenience centers, and the county hauls it the remainder of the way to White Oak. The county will continue to operate the centers at a cost of $680,000.

When Merrily Teasley returned for her second first day at the Balsam Mountain Inn in early September, a familiar couple was sitting on the entry room couch — a St. Louis duo who had visited the inn those years when she had owned it. They were there to herald her return.

“I thought, ‘Oh my. This feels good,’” Teasley said.

Teasley bought the historic inn on the courthouse steps in 1990, saving it from foreclosure and owned it until she retired in 2004. She has now resumed ownership after the former owners were forced to declare bankruptcy — and once again rescuing the inn on the courthouse steps.

She first spotted the 104-year-old inn, which sits off the Blue Ridge Parkway between Waynesville and Sylva, while night hiking with a friend. A full moon was shining down on the building.

“It looked magical,” Teasley said. “The bones of the building were just exquisite.”

Looking at the building in full daylight gave her a more realistic impression but it did not quell her attraction. The neglected bed and breakfast was not for sale at the time, recalled Teasley, who lived in Tennessee at the time.

But, when she found herself in the area a year later, Teasley found the inn up for sale. Although she was leaving the next day to go home, Teasley was able to pencil in a 6 a.m. meeting with the Realtor before she left.

“I had five hours to think about (buying) it driving over to Tennessee,” she said.

The 42,000 square-foot, 50-guest-room country inn is now one of seven structures she has restored.

“I love old buildings,” Teasley said.

Because the inn is a historic landmark, Teasley had to work within the parameters of the state historic preservation department guidelines. The structure features a mixture of original aspects, such as its molding, as well as accurate replicas from the early 1900s.

Although it has been moved from its original place, a small sink still sits on the wall in the hallway near the gift shop. It was once said that the water from the sink had healing properties.

Teasley’s particular affection for the Balsam Mountain Inn is apparent as she relayed her first time seeing the inn and how green growth creeps up the mountains as the trees and other plant life begin to leaf out in the spring.

“It’s the prettiest place on earth in the spring,” she said.

Revitalization

Teasley officially regained ownership of the inn last month and is busy returning the building to its former glory.

“The book I was reading when I came up here in September I haven’t finished,” said Teasley, who used to read several books a week.

Even her dog is the same as before: Grover is just older now. The white-and-brown shelter dog, Teasley said, didn’t take much time to re-acclimate to his surroundings. He immediately returned to his spot behind the check-in counter, Teasley said.

When she returned to the inn this past September, one of the first orders of business was to let former patrons know she had returned.

Teasley sent out 800 notes to previous guests, telling them that the inn is “going back to the way I used to run it,” she said. Of those, she estimated that she received 220 replies.

Although things are much the same this time around, Teasley herself is more experienced. That’s helped everyone associated with the inn.

“You know what to expect this time around,” said Tom Tiberi from his perch behind the check-in desk.

Tiberi helps Teasley keep the inn. He worked for the couple who owned it during the late 2000s until they were forced to declare bankruptcy. Former regular visitors to the inn had stopped patronizing it, saying the experience had declined without Teasley at the helm.

The staff is “willing to do whatever they can to make it work again,” Teasley said, adding that Tiberi had maintained the inn while it was between owners.

Now, Tiberi’s sister, Mary Kay Morrow, has joined him as head chef of the inn’s restaurant, where dishes are made almost solely from fresh produce. Even some of its fish is shipped regularly from Hawaii, Teasley said. It is caught, packaged and delivered to the inn within 48 hours.

While breakfast is included in the cost of the room, the inn is open to anyone for dinner. The restaurant can seat up to 164 guests in its main dining room and patio. Smaller rooms are available for private dining or meetings.

Stay the Night

The Balsam Mountain Inn will remain open throughout the winter months. Check-in time is after 3 p.m., and room rates range from $145 to $225 a night. The inn is located at 68 Seven Springs Drive in Balsam in the Haywood-Jackson county line.

The inn also has a restaurant, which is open to the public for dinner and breakfast daily, year-round. The dining room and patio can seat up to 164 guests, and smaller rooms are available for private dining or meetings. Musicians regularly perform at the restaurant.

855.456.9498 or balsammountaininn.net.

New owners of the high-end Balsam Mountain Preserve development aren’t daunted by the choppy waters of Western North Carolina’s real estate landscape.

Despite the still tepid demand for pricey second homes in the mountains, they say they have charted a course that will bring the beleaguered development out on the other side of the storm still raging across the rest of the region.

The 4,400-acre mega-development — one of the region’s few mountainside golf developments that can rightfully carry that tag line — has its share of battle scars. It’s been through foreclosure, repossessed by investors, hawked to the lowest bidder, babysat by an out-of-state caretaker, then put up for sale.

Now, a rescue of Balsam Mountain Preserve has come full circle. Two wealthy homeowners in the development teamed up to buy the development for $6 million — a fraction of what it was once worth.

If there’s ever a development where millionaire homeowners could emerge from the ranks to become the owners, it’s Balsam Mountain Preserve. Harry Avant of Louisiana and David Carlile of Texas knew each other previously from the oil and gas industry, even before buying their respective property in Balsam Mountain Preserve several years ago.

They have hired two former members of the Balsam sales team to come back and run the place. Jimmy McDonnell and Bruce Fine both worked together at Balsam Mountain Preserve under the original owners and developers.

“We know the owners, we know the property, we know the employees, we know the project, we know the market,” Fine said of their return, this time as president and vice president.

The hunt for solid ground in today’s new real estate landscape is more than just a financial deal for the new team.

“If there wasn’t a significant upside from a financial and business perspective we probably wouldn’t have done it. These guys are not a nonprofit entity,” Fine said. “But to save a place that you really have an emotional connection to, and it could be a good business decision at the same time, is a win-win overall.”

For the past 18 months, Balsam Mountain Preserve has been in limbo. The former owners defaulted on $19 million in debt and went into in foreclosure. The development landed in the hands of a private equity firm that immediately began looking to unload it.

So what, exactly, did Avant and Carlile get for their $6 million purchase of Balsam Mountain Preserve?

For starters, they own a really, really nice Arnold Palmer golf course. All the amenities, from the swimming pool to tennis courts to clubhouse to riding stables, are also included.

But as for what’s marketable — the pieces of the development that are worth something — there are about 130 to 150 home sites left to sell off.

Only one lot has sold in Balsam Mountain Preserve this year, however.

“2011 was kind of a lost year for Balsam. It was for sale and people knew it was for sale,” Fine said.

Despite the unimpressive showing, the new team isn’t fretting over whether Balsam Mountain Preserve will make it. Optimism over the new owners is already fueling sales, Fine said. There are two contracts pending — one on a new lot and one on an existing lot being resold by a property owner.

“We have more activity in the week we have owned this place than we’d had all year,” Fine said early last month. “People are moving forward now because it is stable. They like the story about the homeowners who have joined together and bought the place.”

Few golf course developments can claim to have that bumpy road behind them.

“Every other one has the loom of foreclosure and takeover,” McDonnell said.

Fine said few are going to emerge as intact as Balsam.

“There are so many communities in the mountains that have nothing there other than a front entrance and some renderings on paper.  Those are the places that have fallen off the end of the earth,” Fine said.

At Balsam Mountain Preserve, there is enough “critical mass” already in play, Fine said. The golf course is finished, the swimming pool has water, a restaurant and clubhouse are functioning. Roads actually lead to the lots — a novelty compared to some subdivisions that lack even that bare essential.

Most importantly, though, are the 70 homes on the ground and another 110 property owners of lots. Too many subdivisions in the mountains are empty ghost towns, and just like no one wants to eat in an empty restaurant, no one wants to be the first to build — not when it’s such a buyer’s market. And that’s why homes on the ground are an important part of Balsam’s critical mass.

Nowhere to go but up

As the rest of the nation plunged into a recession in 2008, WNC seemed insulated from the real estate crash — its quality of life, desirable views and retirement reputation helped it hang on.

But by the end of that year, the economy finally caught up with the region — and with Balsam Mountain Preserve. Lot sales simply evaporated.

With no cash coming in, the former developers Chaffin and Light, a highly reputable company known for massive eco-developments from South Carolina’s coast to Colorado, defaulted on its $19 million loan.

Chaffin had bargained hard for a work out, hoping to get an extension or refinance on the outstanding debt. Meanwhile, property owners at Balsam made a bid to save their own development from foreclosure. They raised $8 million and explored forming their own LLC to bail out Balsam Mountain Preserve and own the development themselves.

But the private equity firm, TriLyn, was unwilling to negotiate for anything less than a full payoff of the $19 million owed.

Marc Antoncic, the managing partner of the firm, arguably was in a tough spot. He was supposed to be earning investors a return on their money — not losing their money. So he had a choice. Cut his losses, take what he could get and get out — even if it meant selling Balsam at a rather substantial loss.

His other choice was to step in to the developer’s shoes himself, hoping to turn it around.

“You can’t rescue everything, but you can’t just sit back and hope it goes away,” Antoncic said in an interview 18 months ago, shortly after his take over. “If you bail today, you lose all that. We would turn over a good asset to someone else.”

In hindsight, it now seems he made the wrong choice.

He didn’t turn it around, and only got $6 million for the development in the end.

“Literally every deal they had on the table, whether it was Jim Chaffin or the homeowners, everyone of those was better than what they ultimately got,” Fine said.

“They had some great opportunities in front of them they chose not to take,” McDonnell agreed.

Homeowners, for their part, are optimistic for the first time since 2009 when Balsam Mountains Preserve headed down the path to foreclosure.

“Ever since then Balsam has been in a real state of uncertainty,” Fine said.

What would happen to the golf course had been one of their biggest fears. Well-groomed fairways with that perfect phosphorescent green hue come at a steep price. The golf course had been losing $1 million a year. The original developers, Chaffin and Light, were underwriting the cost of the golf course operations. Picking up that price tag is part of what sunk the developers.

After foreclosure, homeowners had to pony up the money to operate the course.

A new model

There are only a handful of developments in WNC in the same league as Balsam Mountain Preserve: of a similar acreage, prestige, price range and quality. And they too are seeing a comeback, suggesting the market has at long last bottomed out, Fine said.

“Prices are lower compared to where they were at in 2006, but they are coming back,” Fine said. “It sounds cliché-ish, but for someone who wants to be here this is when people want to strike. We aren’t at the bottom anymore.”

That financial strategy is part of Fine’s sales pitch. But the other part is far more emotional.

“The person who is waiting for the bottom is putting off living their life,” Fine said.

Indeed, the pent-up demand is why Fine has such a rosy outlook for 2012.

“The dynamic is people have put their plans on hold for anywhere from three to four years,” Fine said. “I’ve been sitting on the sidelines, I’m not any younger, I’m not any healthier, my grandkids are getting older.”

And that reality could drastically change the real estate paradigm in WNC. Before, baby boomers looked for lots to build their dream home on. But building a house — from deciding on a layout for the master walk-in closet to choosing the color of granite for the kitchen counter — can take two to three years. These days, prospective buyers want to get on with it — and perhaps spare their marriage the strain of a custom-built house — even if it means they won’t be picking out their own light fixtures or tile floor design.

“People want something they can move into,” Fine said. “In conjunction with that dynamic, people are also no longer buying what they can afford, they are buying less than they can afford in a lot of cases.”

People used to buy at the upper end of their limit — assuming that real estate would always be worth more next year anyway. But with appreciation less of a sure bet these days, second-home buyers are rethinking.

“Seriously, do I need 6,000 square feet in retirement? That’s how affluent people are thinking today,” Fine said.

Which means Balsam Mountain Preserve must retool its model — as with the rest of WNC’s developers.

“It is not going to be all about 2-acre single family home sites,” Fine said. “If you sit around and wait for individual home site buyers to come visit you one at a time, it will be years and years and years before you sell through all your availability.”

What’s in Balsam Mountain Preserve’s cards now would have been borderline blasphemy several years ago: smaller lots, pre-built homes, and even perhaps townhomes.

“Balsam has never had that, ever,” Fine said.

There are about 35 lots in the current phase of the development already platted and ready to sell. Another 100 or so are in the works, and will like take the form of smaller, more closely spaced lots rather than larger, spread-out ones. And, they could be sold with homes already on them rather than empty lots.

As a development, Balsam Mountain Preserve doesn’t particularly want to get into the spec home business. Developers generally sell lots, builders build homes.

But that’s where Balsam Mountain Preserve once again hopes to tap its unique base of homeowners.

Homeowners, eager to see their own community succeed, may actually finance construction of model homes by a builder. The homeowner would theoretically be helping out the builder they used and liked when building their own home, make a little money and help land new neighbors to keep Balsam Mountain Preserve stable.

“The developers who can facilitate these alliances between people who can finance — i.e., non-banks — and the builders, those are the communities that are really going to thrive in this segment,” Fine said.

Two dogs in the rural countryside of Upper Crabtree in Haywood County died from antifreeze poisoning last week, a tragic fate that has left the dog owners wondering whether it was an accident or malicious deed.

Pat and Stone Reuning and their 4-year-old son woke up on Christmas morning to find their dog Badger staggering and throwing up profusely. The progression of symptoms was rapid and alarming. Pat had to make lots of noise inside so her son couldn't hear Badger having seizures in their backyard, and by the afternoon the dog was clearly in such agony that Stone shot it.

Their neighbor's dog, Abraham, started to show the same signs the next day, and his owner Ryan Sutton rushed him to the vet.

Unfortunately, it was too late. Antifreeze poisoning has to be caught within four to five hours after it is swallowed for treatment to save the animal's life, said Dr. Kristen Hammett, the owner and senior veterinarian of Waynesville Animal Hospital.

As soon as they got home, Sutton's wife typed up a flyer about the antifreeze poisoning and set out on a mission, hoping whoever had left antifreeze out would put it up and everyone with dogs — which is just about everyone in Upper Crabtree — would keep them close.

"She went to every neighbor in our immediate area," Sutton said.

Sutton called one neighbor who he knew "does a lot of mechanicing" and asked if he'd possibly left out used antifreeze.

"He said he knows better," Sutton said. "It is so well known that it is toxic, not just to dogs but to little kids, too."

That's what makes Sutton and the Reuning's so suspicious of the antifreeze poisoning.

"At first, I thought it was an accident. I really did," Pat said. But now she's not so sure. "Someone has been out here poisoning dogs — that's what we think," she said.

Badger and Abraham went everywhere together, whether loafing at each other's house or adventuring about. They mostly roamed on the Sutton's 150 acres but occasionally would stray. Dog owners are supposed to keep their dogs on their own property, according to Haywood County's animal laws. But, it's almost a given that in rural areas like Upper Crabtree, dogs can be found wandering.

"People used to let their dogs roam in this community, or at least they used to," Pat Reuning said.

"I growed up in Crabtree, and that's the way most people did," Sutton added.

Abraham is the second dog Sutton has lost to antifreeze poisoning in less than two years. Both were English Setter bird dogs, which run about $1,500 each not counting the hours of personal time spent training them. Sutton, an avid bird hunter, plans to buy another, but this time will put in an underground fence.

"I don't want another one to die. I am going to have to protect my investment this time," Sutton said.

Sutton said they will probably never know for sure whether it was an accident or deliberate.

"We thought and thought about what could have happened. It seems somebody is doing it on purpose," Sutton said.

One of their neighbors has complained about several dogs in the area, including Badger and Abraham.

Just before the antifreeze poisoning, Abraham was caught eyeing the neighbor's chickens so the neighbor tied him up until Sutton could come over and get him back.

Just before Sutton's last dog died a little under two years ago, Badger was caught eyeing the chickens and was accused of picking one off.

The neighbor had called Haywood County Animal Control to complain more than once about dogs in the neighborhood.

Haywood County Animal Control investigated the antifreeze poisoning last week several days after it occurred. If someone did it on purpose, they could be charged with animal cruelty.

"You have to be able to prove that the person deliberately set it out and was malicious about it. Whether they were upset with the person and the animal was going to pay the price or whether they were upset with the animal," said Jean Hazzard, the director of Haywood animal control.

Hazzard said she has not seen a case of deliberate antifreeze poisoning.

"Sometimes it is not always deliberate. You would be surprised the people who don't realize that dogs will lap it up. It is sweet to a dog," Hazzard said.

For Pat, she is still struggling to explain this first encounter with death and loss to her 4-year-old.

"So far he is still saying 'When is Badger coming back? When is Badger coming home?'" Pat said. "It breaks my heart."

The unusual, toxic properties of antifreeze

It takes just a thimbleful of antifreeze to kill a cat, less for a bird, a smidgeon more for a dog.

Once lapped up, the animal dies a highly unpleasant death in 24 to 72 hours.

Antifreeze tastes sweet to dogs but even the far more finicky pallets of felines have a weak spot when it comes to antifreeze, said Dr. Kristen Hammett, the owner and senior veterinarian of Waynesville Animal Hospital.

The first symptoms manifest almost immediately, with the pet essentially acting like a drunken sailor — staggering, wobbly and often throwing up. Then it clears up, leaving the owner to assume whatever had gotten into their pet is all better. But within a few hours, the irreversible damage of kidney failure has set in, with gruesome and agonizing seizures and convulsions. Blood tests and a kidney examination can confirm antifreeze poisoning.

"It is not something we see every month, but it is not rare," Hammett said. "Sometimes it is accidental, sometimes it is malicious."

In the summer, Hammett always keeps an eye out in parking lots for the telltale green sheen of an antifreeze leak, occasionally spewed out by an overheated radiator. If she spies it, she heads inside and implores the store owner to clean it up right away. She has seen cats die after licking spots of antifreeze from their owner's driveway.

Home mechanics should always dispose of used antifreeze immediately after changing their coolant, she added.

The treatment for antifreeze ingestion is an unusual but surprisingly simple trick of chemistry.

Antifreeze in and of itself is not toxic. The active ingredient, namely ethylene glycol, is technically harmless — except enzymes in the liver convert it into another substance, and that substance causes complete kidney failure.

The treatment for swallowing antifreeze is an IV of grain alcohol straight into the blood stream.

"It keeps the liver so busy converting the grain alcohol it lets the antifreeze pass through the body unchanged," Hammett said.

— By Becky Johnson

Donations are already rolling in for the Waynesville Art Commission’s latest public art piece, a replica of the historic Smokies’ arch over Main Street, but the group is still looking for donors.

“I am real pleased with the response so far,” said Jan Griffin, head of the art commission.

The art commission has already sent out its first wave of fundraising letters to many of the established local families of Waynesville and plans to mail more letters in the coming weeks. The donations will help pay for a “Gateway to the Smokies” arch, which will be installed in the mini-park at the corner of Main and Depot streets. The original arch spanned Main Street itself for several decades, proclaiming the town as the “Eastern Entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

So far, the commission has received about $2,000 in private donations toward a new Waynesville arch that will cost between $5,000 and $6,000.

“We are very pleased with that,” said Griffin. “The interest is very, very high. We’ve got an awful lot of really excited people about it.”

With one possible exception.

Town Manager Lee Galloway received a phone call from Bryson City Town Manager Lee Callicutt a couple of months ago regarding the wording on the arch. The piece will read “Gateway to the Smokies,” a slogan that Bryson City has used on its seal and police department badges for decades.

“He said that he had been directed to pass the concern of the Town of Bryson City on to me,” Galloway said.

Some in Bryson were less than thrilled that Waynesville’ arch would bear their catch phrase. Nothing else came of the concern.

The art commission has created and installed three permanent public art pieces around town during the past few years. The latest addition will be the archway, the second art piece referencing the Smokies in the mini-park on the corner across from the historic courthouse. Already in place is a metal railing with mountain peaks and salamanders.

The art commission premiered its artistic renderings of the arch earlier this fall.

Ed Kelley, who has headed the project, is now taking the sketches of the arch to an engineer who will act as a consultant, suggesting specifically how the arch will be made and what it will be made of.

“Everything has to be very specific,” Kelley said.

Once the parameters are set, the commission will take bids from several area artists and award the project to the lowest bidder.

People who wish to donate to help pay for the arch can write a check to the Town of Waynesville and drop it at the municipal building on Main Street. Donors should note that the money is for the art project in the memo line.

Clyde’s police chief has been placed on suspension, but town leaders are not saying why.

Police Chief Derek Dendy is currently on a 30-day unpaid suspension, with the possibility of further action pending the outcome of a hearing in two weeks. Clyde Town Administrator Joy Garland cited state personnel laws as preventing the town from discussing the reasons for the suspension. Dendy has been a police officer for the town of just more than 1,300 since September 1998. He was promoted to chief in 2008.  

Mayor Jerry Walker said a pre-disciplinary hearing for Dendy is set for Jan. 9 at 2 p.m. with the five-member town board. This hearing presumably affords Dendy the opportunity to respond to further disciplinary action being considered by the board.

Walker noted town leaders opted for an unpaid suspension because otherwise, the mayor said, “it’s just a month-long vacation.”