Normally, when one hears the sounds of hammers and saws at 61 Depot Street in Bryson City, it signaled an expansion of the Nantahala Brewing’s original taproom and production facility. But, with an announcement last week, those sounds are of big change for the craft beer company. 

Long’s Chapel leadership only received word about two weeks ago that its lease for The Open Door Ministry building in Frog Level would not be renewed for another year. 

SEE ALSO: Frog Level soup kitchen lease won’t be renewed

Motion Makers Bicycles in Cherokee is starting 2020 with a new location and a new roommate, but the same optimism about the future of outdoor sports on the Qualla Boundary. 

The bike shop’s Cherokee location first opened 2018, sharing a two-story yellow building on Big Cove Road with Franklin-based outfitter Outdoor 76. The concept was solid, but the logistics proved problematic. Four months after opening in Cherokee, Outdoor 76 launched a third location in Clayton, Georgia. Travel between the three locations was time-consuming, and the two-story layout was a challenge. 

For years opioids were overprescribed by physicians and overused by patients, leading to skyrocketing rates of addiction, overdoses and drug-related crime. Now that the issue has risen to the level of a national public health and safety crisis, society is more aware of the dangers associated with opioid abuse and physicians are learning new ways to manage patients’ pain levels. 

Tucked in the depths of Wall Street in Waynesville, the Green Orchid Soap Co. is meant to be found by chance or happenstance — this cozy spot just off Main Street, right down a side alley away from the bustle of downtown.

The N.C. Department of Transportation will pay water and sewer hookup fees for businesses displaced by the N.C. 107 project, but it will be up to business and property owners to ask for reimbursement, right-of-way agent Jake Day told the Tuckaseigee Water and Sewer Authority board last week. 

Abundant Labs CEO Chip Miller looked like a college chemistry professor as he started drawing diagrams and compound percentages on the blackboard while trying to explain what it is the new enterprise is doing in Canton.

The Abundant Labs partners announced this summer they would be opening the $12 million state-of-the-art hemp processing facility inside the NEO Corporation building off I-40 in Canton and has now been in production for a month. 

Hemp has only been legal in North Carolina for a couple of years, but already the plant is presenting an issue in the criminal justice system that the legislature is still trying to iron out. 

If the United States’ outdoor recreation industry were its own country, it would be the world’s 25th largest economy. And, while towns like Moab and Boulder and Jackson Hole might have more name recognition on a nationwide scale, Western North Carolina has everything it takes to command a large piece of that hypothetical country’s pie.

After years of disuse, a hidden gem in the heart of Waynesville’s downtown is finally ready to reclaim its rightful role as one of the community’s social and business hubs.