The first cow ushered into the WNC Regional Livestock Center in Canton weighed 850 well-proportioned pounds. Despite being two-months pregnant, she danced lithely about the livestock arena, easily sidestepping the green, long plastic paddle a handler occasionally dabbed in her direction.

“Get your hands up in the air and let ‘er rip,” the auctioneer said excitedly to a crowd of hundreds, so many that people were lined along the walls two and three deep, and even spilled out into the hallways. This was a ballcaps-and-boots-kind of crowd, mainly men, though there were some women and, despite this being a school day, even a few kids. So many people showed up, the state Highway Patrol turned out, too, directing the long lines of traffic coming off Interstate 40.

The cow, an attractive blonde, fetched $750.

And so went the first sale at the first major cattle market in Western North Carolina since a livestock auction in Asheville closed seven years ago. It required the push of local farmers, and money from willing donors, to make the WNC Regional Livestock Center a reality — more than $3 million from various organizations, businesses and producers financed the building that houses the market.

“We came together three or four years ago to start organizing for a new market,” said Bruce Peterson of WNC Communities, a collaborative regional group that works on quality-of-life projects such as the new regional livestock center. “We didn’t need to take all this money out of state.”

That’s what Alden Childers of Swain County would have done if this regional livestock center hadn’t opened. He and friend Clarence Wiggins, also of Bryson City, would have hauled the cattle they brought to Canton this day — including a bull they picked up along the way in Jackson County — to Tennessee perhaps, or maybe even down into Georgia.

Michael Vanhook wanted to bring a few head over from Macon County to sell, but didn’t get them rounded up in time. Instead, he and Jerry Sutton of Franklin just watched the show, like so many here this day.

Vanhook, who stays busy raising and selling cattle after retiring from Franklin High School, says a new market this close to home helps those in the cattle business.

That’s because hauling cattle costs gas money, time and stresses the animals, said Boyce Deitz, a regional aid for Congressman Heath Shuler (and Shuler’s former Swain County football coach).

His boss was on hand to meet and greet and take in the show, but Deitz was all business — and his business this fine Monday was selling the four heifers and a steer he’d hauled over the Balsams from his pastures in Jackson County. That’s obviously a lot closer than taking the animals all the way to Tennessee, he noted.

“It would’ve taken me about two hours,” Deitz said. “If you unloaded right then and came back, it was a day’s journey and a tank of fuel.”

Lucas Tipton doesn’t expect to save time driving his cattle to Canton, though he’s happy the market opened. He lives in Burnsville, and with about 100 head, he keeps busy driving to buy and sell at a variety of cattle markets. Tipton will frequent Canton on Mondays for this weekly market, and be in Chesnee, S.C. on Tuesdays, and all the way up in Abingdon, Va., on Friday and Saturdays.

That’s what a lot of cattle farmers do, though most in this region on a smaller scale than Tipton. Sell at the market, and then buy some more to grow out. Sell those, and buy some more.

A red calf trots into the show arena. Tipton doesn’t much care for red calves.

“I just like black ones,” he said in explanation. “They seem to do a little better for us, and bring a little more per pound.”

That’s what this market opening is about — farmers being able to make money by raising cattle. Tipton approved the method of sale being used in Canton: “that’s the right way,” he said, apparently thinking of some markets that use other methods. Beef cattle in Canton are being sold by the pound —  cows, on the other hand, are given a pregnancy test, “aged” and sold by the head.

It’s a sunny, mid-March Friday, the air is barely warm enough to warrant open windows and loosened collars, and on this particular spring morning, John Queen is a pretty popular guy.

His hip-holstered Blackberry stays quiet just for a few minutes at a stretch, and he has only to take a step or two around the shiny new offices at the WNC Regional Livestock Market before being waylaid by an outstretched invoice needing his signature or logistical question awaiting his advice. Where are the gate keys and who gets a set? How close are the welders to completion?

SEE ALSO: Farmers turn out in droves for cattle auction opening day

It’s the Friday prior to the market’s first Monday sale, and Queen, who is, in essence, the ringmaster, emcee and manager of this show, is like the queen bee of this hive of workers, all bustling diligently to finish off the details before the market’s opening.

On a mid-morning walkthrough of the new facility with the site’s project manager, he flits back and forth from problem to problem — giving direction to the Bobcat operators, gamely scaling the side of a dump truck to point its driver in the right direction, strategizing with workers on a last-minute water trough installation — though ‘flit’ really isn’t a word that would describe Queen’s style well.

He’s tall but not ungainly, with a long face, dark grey hair, eyes the mid-blue of a gas flame and a manner that is at once authoritative and friendly. He’s the longtime president and owner of Southeast Livestock Exchange, the Haywood County company in charge of running the new livestock market, and it’s not an overstatement to say that, for Queen, livestock is a lifestyle. In fact, it’s in his blood.

“I’m a fourth-generation cattle producer, from right here in Haywood County,” he says, the first words from his mouth, in fact, when asked to explain just precisely how he got into this business. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him all raised cattle right here, but it’s Queen himself who’s taken the business to a level far surpassing a simple cow-and-calves operation.

Though he may call himself a cattle farmer, livestock marketer probably fits the bill a little better; it’s what has made his career for the last 30-plus years and made his role in the new regional market possible.

Queen has been in the business of marketing cattle since 1979, first at the now-defunct Western Carolina market in Asheville, then briefly with an ill-fated Canton market, and since 2005, an online video marketing outfit that’s made Queen’s company into a regional marketer and national and international seller. Over the years, the birth of online sales coupled with Queen’s natural fervor for the industry has led his operations to open out into a panoply of new venues and ventures.

Essentially, the way the system works, says Queen, is much like a live auction — but larger, quicker and more profitable and efficient for both buyer and seller. His team will trek out to farms in a three-state area, take stock of a farmer’s livestock — weight, height, conformation and various other statistics important to those whose business is the bovine market — then shoot video of the cattle in question. DVDs and catalogs are then sent to potential buyers, often middlemen for end-users like beef companies, and the cattle are hawked on live video auction every Monday. The online operation has 800 virtual seats for would-be buyers, and for many, Queen says it’s far-and-away more efficient than approaching farmers or attending small auctions to put together a load of cattle piecemeal.

“He can buy a tractor-trailer load of cattle in about 15 seconds, where he couldn’t buy a tractor-trailer load of cattle in a sale barn in a matter of two or three hours,” says Queen, which is quicker, more convenient and cost-effective for the buyers and more lucrative for the sellers, who can get a better price per head when they go in with other farmers.

It’s part of what Queen calls added-value sales, and it’s a pitch he’s pretty passionate about, because he sees it as the ideal solution for helping small-time cattlemen to stay afloat. It’s also what he hopes producers can get out of this market as well.

Back in the open air of the market, Queen walks the catwalk that runs above the numbered metal chutes, explaining the complex process that brings cattle from the rear of the arena, snaking through a series of interlacing metal lanes and pens to the stadium-seated auction room at the opposite end. Queen looks the mixture of farmer and businessman that he is — faded Wranglers atop equally careworn Justin boots, both standard uniform for cowboys and cattlemen from San Diego to Syracuse, but with a crisp, pressed blue gingham button-down that is less farmer, more broker and that ever-present Blackberry hugging his right hip.

Shafts of morning light crisscross over the textured concrete and dirt floors, bouncing from the gleaming gray pen bars, giving the whole place the hushed feel of an ancient cathedral, and it’s clear that Queen is in his element, in this cathedral that seems to stir in him both reverence and pride.

But it wasn’t always this way. He’s really not one of those people that grew up wanting to take over the family business. He wasn’t, he says, exactly waiting in the wings as a young man.

“When I left to go to college, I swore I’d never come back to the farm,” says Queen, laughing wryly. “My dad made me work there when I was a kid, and I thought that day when I left, I told myself it was my chance to escape and I’d never come back.”

But it took only a few months at Western Carolina University for Queen to realize that the farm was really his love.

Even still, though, it wasn’t quite enough. His ambitions were greater, his talents broader than simple farming. And when he got into the business end soon after returning, he never looked back.

“I wanted to see the bigger picture rather than just what we did in Haywood County,” says Queen, and that he did, eventually becoming president of first the North Carolina Cattlemen’s Association and then the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assocation.

The business, he says, has evolved over the years, growing in scope and depth, especially since the advent of online sales has put the world of clamoring cattle buyers at the fingertips of every small seller with an internet connection.

The newly opened regional market will, Queen hopes, do the same thing for local producers that burgeoning online auctions have done — provide small Southern farmers, who average 20 head per farm, the outlet to reach big-time buyers by pulling together and selling together.

Queen says he knows some rail against progress such as this, but he minces no words when he says it is truly the only way forward.

“Tradition is a great thing, but you know, in all reality, tradition is probably the No. 1 enemy of agriculture today,” says Queen. “We all want to do as daddy did or as granddaddy did, and we can’t operate that way any longer. We have to change as time does. We’ve got to learn to adapt to that if we’re going to get the value out of our livestock.”

And really, he is the perfect spokesman for that growth, change and adaptation; with his roots deep in local soil, he understands and appreciates the history that brought regional agriculture to its current resting place, but with his head and heart in the global market, he understands that this can’t be its resting place for long, lest it be left behind by a speedily changing world.

Plus, for all his success in international livestock marketing — and he’s adamant that global exporting must be a part of every cattle farmer’s core principles — to meet John Queen is to meet one of the friendliest, most plainly genuine people you’re likely to come across. His ardent zeal for what he does and what it can become is endearing and contagious, and it’s not a mental stretch to envision him convincing veritably every cattleman that crosses his path of the merits of forward agricultural progress.

Though he doesn’t think he’ll pass his enterprise on to his daughters the way it was passed on to him — the business has changed, he says, grown and tendrilled out into a complex organism that needs someone with his passion behind it — he’d like nothing better than to be doing exactly this until the very day he dies.

“I’ve always been thrilled with the atmosphere and nature of the marketplace. The day I die, I hope I’m either running cattle around on my farm or somewhere marketing cattle. It’s just the ideal thing for me,” says Queen. And with that, and a ring of the Blackberry, he’s off once more, into the next incarnation of a business that he’s built from the ground up, and an industry that he’s helping lead into the future of American farming.

By DeeAnna Haney • SMN Intern

Perched atop a Canton nursing home roof, gleaming in the sun is the newest addition to the building, bringing it to the forefront of the green initiative in North Carolina.

Silver Bluff Village held a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week to celebrate the installation of a new solar energy system. It is the first nursing facility in the state to harness the sun for the building’s hot water needs.

Provided by SolTherm, a clean energy services firm based in Asheville, the 32 4-by-10 foot panels will provide up to 50 percent of the facility’s hot water consumption including bathing, cooking and other dietary requirements.

When SolTherm first approached Silver Bluff owners Bob and Lisa Leatherwood about how a solar energy project could benefit the 195-bed nursing home, the couple had already committed to reducing energy usage by replacing their plumbing fixtures, all light bulbs and upgrading their wastewater treatment facility.

The idea of using alternative water heating sources had crossed their minds during this building transformation two years ago, but they were sure the project would be far too expensive.

But SolTherm’s research results on the building quickly changed the couple’s minds. The company found that a solar hot water energy system would reduce the nursing home’s energy costs by 10 percent immediately, saving them an estimated $315,000 over 20 years if they participated in the NoCapEx program. (This number is assuming propane prices continue to increase at six percent each year).

Bob Leatherwood said he first thought it was too good to be true. With NoCapEx, the company promised to front the solar panel equipment and installation with no upfront cost to Silver Bluff. In return, the Leatherwoods were asked to sign a 20-year contract and pay a monthly fee.

After SolTherm’s proposal, Lisa Leatherwood said the decision to install was a “no-brainer.” “All we had to do was provide the building,” she said.

The Heliodyne solar panels capture the sun’s thermal energy by heated fluids in the solar collectors and then send it to heat exchangers. The solar heated water is then stored in a 2,000-gallon tank and can be used throughout the day.

According to SolTherm’s Web site, SolTherm.com, traditional hot water heaters waste as much as 35 percent fossil fuels. The solar panels work to reduce the use of a hot water heater thus saving money and environmental impact.

“This is something we would encourage anybody to look at and we’re very excited and glad to be an example in the community,” Bob Leatherwood said at the ceremony.

Lisa Leatherwood said she is pleased with the results of the solar panels already. The online monitoring system inside the building that tracks the system’s progress reads the facility has saved 225 trees, 221 gallons of gas and 6,746 vehicle miles to date.

“We’re proud to reduce our carbon footprint, create jobs and of course save money,” she said.

Canton will be opening its doors to new business when a long-awaited upgrade to its Champion Drive sewer line is completed next year.

The update, which town officials say has been on the list of top priorities for several years, will cost $1.2 million and should take a little more than a year to complete.

Town Manager Al Matthews said that the current system is already overtaxed, and that’s preventing potential new businesses to set up shop in the corridor that runs from Interstate 40 into downtown Canton along Champion Drive.

“The line is drastically undersized for the new growth and development along Champion Drive,” said Matthews. “It [the upgrade] is a fairly broad-reaching economic development tool as well as meeting those needs that are in existence now.”

According to Matthews, the current line is at such capacity right now that even existing businesses in the area are unable to expand and maintain sewer service.

Once the larger line is in place, however, it will serve the new livestock market and provide capacity for both business expansion and new businesses alike.

The crux of the problem, said Matthews, is an over-extension of the line’s original intent. For example, the portion that serves the multitude of businesses between Sagebrush Steakhouse and Arby’s was only originally intended to serve the steak restaurant. But when Canton saw explosive growth along the road, the sewer capacity didn’t expand along with it.

Now, with the birth of a new urgent care center on the road imminent, appropriate sewage capabilities are urgently needed.

As Matthews said, the concept has been bandied about for some time, with the idea being that larger, big-box stores may look to Canton – almost equidistant between Waynesville and Asheville – as the prime location to draw shoppers from the outskirts of both cities. The industrial park that is also tied onto the line is another prime candidate for expansion and additional business creation.

Now, said Matthews, the area will once again have the trifecta necessary for new building of any kind – open real estate, water services and sewer capabilities.

Funding will be coming from several different sources, including a $100,000 grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation and a $600,000 grant from the N.C. Rural Center. Matthews said the county has agreed to pay a share of the costs, though to what extent is as yet unclear.

County Commissioner Kevin Ensley expressed support for the project, deeming it beneficial for the whole of the county in terms of economic growth and development.

“When a sewer line goes in, then business will follow,” said Ensley.

Work on the improvements is slated to begin within months, said Matthews, who hopes to have a permit for the construction in hand within 60 days.

Balsam Range will perform a concert with Tony Rice and Bobby Hicks at 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 17 at the Colonial Theater in Canton.

Balsam Range is renowned bluegrass band based in Haywood County whose members include Buddy Melton, Tim Surrett, Marc Pruett, Caleb Smith and Darren Nicholson. Each one has extensive music credentials, and each brings a well-rounded, unique contribution to the fresh sound of this new bluegrass band.

The Canton concert includes nationally known artists Tony Rice and Bobby Hicks for what Balsam Range’s web site is calling a “Christmas party.”

Admission is $15. For tickets and information call 828.235.2760 or visit www.balsamrange.com.

Chances are, the identity of your garbage truck driver doesn’t always cross your mind. You probably give him a friendly smile if you happen to meet over the remnants of last night’s macaroni, but the odds on knowing his life story — or even his name — are pretty slim. He’s the guy who packs off your trash and carts your recycling away. But you may not know that, depending on where you live, he may also be packing heat.

That issue came up recently at a Canton town board meeting, where it came to light that town employees may, in fact, be carrying concealed weapons. Or not. Actually, no one’s quite sure.

“We had a written policy about the use of town vehicles,” said Town Manager Al Matthews. “In that policy, we said no alcohol, no illegal substances and no unlicensed weapons.” But in a routine update of the policy at a town board meeting, someone noticed a loophole. So unlicensed weapons are definitely out; but what about licensed ones?

The answer seemed to be an implicit “yes.” The town never said no, so if any of the 3,000-plus Haywood County residents with a concealed carry permit is in their employ, there’s a chance.

This verdict did not sit well with Alderman Eric Dills.

“If you have a concealed weapon permit, you can carry a concealed weapon with you to work for the town,” he said, voicing his considerable displeasure with the situation. “You can’t go down to Blue Ridge Paper and punch in with a pistol. It’s just a safety issue. It needs to stop. It needs to end.”

Matthews said he doesn’t know how many employees carry concealed weapons on the job, noting sagely that it would be hard to know as they are, in fact, concealed. But, he said, it’s never yet been a problem.

“There have been no issues of people carrying or possessing or any complaints regarding that,” he said.

Matthews and Assistant Town Manager Jason Burrell said that they’re gathering information for the next board meeting, putting out feelers to other towns to see what their policies are.

“We don’t want to be a trailblazer with this,” Matthews said.

They just want to set their rule by the bar others use, protect themselves against tragedy and liability. “It’s a very litigious society,” Matthews said.

If they’re looking for a standard in Western North Carolina, however, they’ll be a long time searching. A Smoky Mountain News check of other local governments found their policies range from long-held prohibitions to non-stances.

Waynesville prohibits it outright. If you’re on any piece of property that is owned, leased or controlled by the town, carrying your firearm – licensed or not – is illegal, regardless of whether you’re an employee.

“It wouldn’t make any difference if they had concealed carry permits or not,” said Waynesville Town Manager Lee Galloway. “It would still be prohibited on property owned, leased or possessed by the town. The two exceptions, he mentions, are law enforcement officers and the houses owned by the town that employees live in as part of their compensation.

Haywood County feels the same. Assistant County Manager Marty Stamey said they’ve long had in their policies prohibitions on packing.

“No one can carry a concealed handgun on property owned or operated by the county,” said Stamey.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, Sylva has no mention of weapons in its personnel policy, according to Town Manager Adrienne Isenhower, who said she also isn’t sure about how many of their employees are licensed to carry in the first place. It’s just never come up.

Bryson City Town Manager Larry Callicutt says that city’s position is roughly the same. They’ve got 33 employees, including their five aldermen, and the only restriction they’ve got is a ban on concealed weapons in town buildings. But any of those employees could easily be in town vehicles or on town duty with their concealed firearms. They’ve never been told not to.

Callicut also says he has no idea as to how many of his employees have permits, but his guess is at least a few.

“I’ve got one,” he says, with the caveat that he doesn’t bring it into the building.

According to Jennifer Canada with the North Carolina Attorney General’s office, local governments have long had the right to clamp down on whether their employees can bring weapons to work.

Under North Carolina General Statute 14-409.40, local governments can forbid their employees to carry firearms anywhere on any of their property or whenever they’re on town business. Many cities, towns and counties passed such ordinances soon after the measure was adopted in 1995 to protect their employees and citizens from danger and themselves from litigation, she said.

And, as Canton’s Matthews pointed out, in today’s world, it’s a necessary precaution.

Second Amendment scholar and expert Robert Cottrol, a professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., said that even though the town might not be held liable in theory, the issue really hasn’t been tested in the high court.

“I think that’s a difficult question,” said Cottrol. “But if you follow what is the course in other areas — for example, if you are an employee and you’re driving a company vehicle and you get into an accident, obviously the company might be sued.”

Could that line of reasoning also apply to local governments in cases of firearm harm or misuse, even if the person isn’t given the weapon by the government or told they should use it? According to Cottrol, the answer is maybe.  

“The person is not necessarily carrying as part of his particular duties,” said Cottrol. “But nonetheless, the employee was in a particular place with the permission to be armed.”

Even, he notes, if the permission was only by omission – never saying no could imply yes. He also notes, however, that on the other side of that argument is that local government isn’t responsible for its employees actions with their firearms any more than the state can take the blame for what’s done with guns they permit.

“The state has given you a license to carry, but the state assumes no responsibility for your actions if you carry,” said Cottrol. “But the courts haven’t addressed it … at this point, I think these are still very much open questions.”

And that is what aldermen and town officials back in Canton are concerned about, and what other cities and towns may need to address, in case an improbable accident or unthinkable tragedy one day became a reality.

What the law says

NCGS 14-409.40(e) A county or municipality may regulate the transport, carrying, or possession of firearms by employees of the local unit of government in the course of their employment with that local unit of government.

By Kristen Davis • Contributing writer

Triple-threat musician Bryan McDowell was first introduced to bluegrass music as a young child while riding in the car with his parents. His father taught him and his sister, Emma, how to identify the sounds of the different instruments and would quiz them on the new knowledge.

“By the time I was 3 or 4, I could tell anybody what instrument was playing when they took a solo,” said Canton native McDowell, now 19 years old.

By age 5, McDowell liked the sound of the fiddle best, so he and his sister played with their parents at local churches as “The McDowell Family Band.” At age 9, McDowell began taking lessons from Arvil Freeman, the renowned old-time fiddler who is a native of Madison County. After the fiddle, the musically precocious pre-teen took up the mandolin and then the guitar.

Several years later in 2009, McDowell became the first musician in the history of the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, (known as “Winfield”) to win first place in all three instrument categories — flat-pick guitar, fiddle and mandolin. McDowell’s two band mates and friends, Brandon Davis and Eric Hardin, won second and third place respectively in the flat-pick guitar competition. First known as “4 Fret Knot” then “Second Circle,” the three musicians now perform as the “Winfield Three.”

McDowell has not slowed down his big “year of firsts” in 2009. This fall, he has won the Galax Fiddlers Convention Guitar Competition, another mandolin championship at Winfield and the Georgia State championships for the flat-pick guitar, fiddle and mandolin.

Right before this year’s Winfield festival in September, McDowell released his first album, “The Contestant,” which is a compilation of his contest tunes and arrangements that he has played over the last two years.

“A lot of people were curious about how I actually sounded in the contest, so I tried to record something that depicted how I sound in the contest,” McDowell said. “It was a success in that it is like a snapshot of my playing at the time.”

To make the recordings sound as much like his live performance as possible, he would listen to the live recording or watch a video of his performance, he added.

While the songs on his “Contestant” album are traditional bluegrass tunes that he has embellished, his next album, which he is currently crafting, will include original material. Compared to the first, this next album will be “different by a long shot” because he has developed a different style, the singer-songwriter said. The album should be released within a year.

“Bryan has got his own style of playing,” said Freeman, who taught fiddle lessons to both McDowell and his sister, Emma. “While teaching him, that’s what I taught him to do — not play exactly like me, but take what I taught him and create his own style.”

McDowell’s approach to the fiddle is more progressive and jazz-like, whereas Freeman’s playing involves more bluegrass, country and “a little swing,” Freeman explained.

McDowell’s style has also been influenced by the bluegrass gospels song he played while performing with his parents and sister in their family band, said Donna McDowell, Bryan McDowell’s mother.  

“We always tried to pick music with a gospel message that would speak to people,” Donna McDowell added. “He still does some gospel, but he does a lot of other things. The biggest thing I see in his playing — I call it finesse. He has this really smooth style that folks enjoy listening to.”

Over the past two years, people all over the country have had the opportunity to hear Bryan McDowell play at shows and competitions — in Maine, New York, Colorado and throughout the southeast.  

When McDowell was a young boy, his family saw famous country-bluegrass singer/songwriter/fiddler Alison Krauss in concert and met her backstage. Krauss told her young fans, “If you play the music you love, you’ll always have an audience.” That truism has stuck with McDowell and his sister, their mother said.

Now, in addition to writing songs for his new album, McDowell is teaching music lessons in Waynesville.

“I want [the music] to be passed on,” McDowell said. “That’s how the music world is. You can’t be learning something and not pass it on to others, otherwise the music dies with you. That’s an idea [Freeman] instilled in me.”

As for his future plans, McDowell said he wants to focus on recording his music and playing shows with Davis and Hardin as “The Winfield Three.” Having won all the major competitions for the instruments he plays, he has his sights set on turning his musical passion into a feasible living. He is considering getting a college education, most likely in business rather than music.

“I was kind of ready to be done with contests,” McDowell added. “There’s a point when it’s kind of hypocritical to say that one musician is better than another one. At competitions, there’s a lot musicians can teach each other on any given day.”

Freeman said he hopes to see his former student pursue studio work rather than playing in a band long-term.

“I would love nothing more than to make a living playing music,” McDowell said. “Even if that wasn’t my main job, I never see myself laying down the instruments. I’d always have to be playing.”

For music clips and booking information, visit his web site: www.bryanmcdowellmusic.com.

In a downtown Canton alleyway, a rusty junction box juts out awkwardly from the sidewalk, long since abandoned to its purpose, while a few yards away broken bricks, orange traffic barrels and twisted lengths of caution tape lay in a heap atop a few pieces of old plywood. On the side of one building, a bright blue tarp hangs crookedly, covering pieces of exposed structure, with bricks on strings dangling precariously from its edges.

But this is not a construction site. This is what town officials call Colonial Alley, and its been sitting like this for a year now.

Greg Petty, owner of The Lunchbox, shares a wall with the alley, and he’s tired of patrons wondering what, exactly, he’s up to under that tarp or suspecting him of being closed. He has been asking the town for months now to deal with the disrepair and clutter in the alley.

“We’ve taken every step in the world to try to get it fixed,” he said, including attending town meetings and making specific requests of aldermen and Mayor Pat Smathers, but apparently to no avail.

“We were told that it would be done and it hasn’t been,” said Petty, who notes that he was told in July that work would begin within weeks.

The trouble began in November 2009 when Petty and Wilbur Davis, owner of the other building adjacent to the alley, noticed leakages on the walls they shared with it. The culprit was an outside wall, erected when a former storefront was leveled to make way for the alley itself. Those outside walls had, over time, begun to crack and separate from the walls of the remaining building, allowing moisture to creep in.

So the city took steps to repair the problem, and began pulling down the outside walls. However, laborers realized halfway in that the problems were deeper and outside their scope of expertise. Instead of being a quick fix, an engineer needed to be summoned, the project bid out and a licensed and experienced contractor would have to take over the job.

And it’s all these extra steps, said Assistant Town Manager Jason Burrell, that have taken much more time than expected.

“This is one of those things that, when you’re a government entity, you have to jump through some hoops,” said Burrell. Where a private citizen or business could see the problem and have it repaired nearly immediately, a government has to take steps to ensure that they’re getting the best deal possible for the taxpayer, he explains.

Burrell said that, after getting a structural engineer’s opinion on what the project actually needed, the town put the project out to bid twice but has had trouble generating interest among contractors who have the right mix of willingness and expertise.

When the town finally received a bid for an acceptable amount from an acceptable contractor, Burrell said that he and Town Manager Al Matthews took it to the aldermen immediately. That bid was approved four weeks ago.

But, said Burrell, when they went to execute the contract and get work going, they again ran into problems.

“We went to do that pretty much the next day, and honestly, we haven’t been able to get up with the contractor,” said Burrell. They called him, sent him a letter, even sent someone to his house, but all to no avail. In essence, that puts the town back at square one.

But to Petty, this doesn’t fly. While he’s concerned with the project’s completion, he said he’s been told several times that a clean-up effort would be taken up immediately. He is still waiting for action.

Matthews agreed that the alley’s appearance was less than ideal.

“It looks bad,” he said. “There’s no doubt it looks like a construction site. But we’re going to get some casual labor, we hope, to pull off the old stucco and start at the top and get the top caps back on, back in place,” which would eliminate the need for the unsightly blue tarp and its fringe of swinging bricks suspended 10 feet off the ground.

Petty said he hopes that’s true, but if no action is taken soon, he intends to climb up himself and at least replace the blue with a clear, more attractive tarp.

“I don’t have a gripe with anyone individually,” Petty said, “but something needs to be done. It needs to be fixed, and I think anyone can see that.”

Canton may be looking toward a new era of revitalization, thanks to a grant from the North Carolina Rural Center. The town was awarded $25,000 earlier this fall for the Step Up Canton program, which will formulate strategies for economic growth and development.

Asheville-based mountain and bluegrass group Sons of Ralph will perform a fundraising concert for the Canton Lions Club from 6 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 28, at the historic Colonial Theatre in downtown Canton.

The Sons of Ralph play a wide variety of music, including many original songs. Their unique sound, which has been described as “Americana,” incorporates traditional mountain music, bluegrass, country and Western, folk, and classic rock. As a testament to the band’s popularity, readers of The Mountain Xpress have voted The Sons of Ralph “Best Local Band” for eight of the last 10 years, including 2007 and 2008.

All proceeds from the concert go to the Canton Lions Club, an active service organization dedicated to serving the people and community of Canton. As part of its continuing mission to serve, the Canton Lions Club provides college scholarships for deserving high school students, supports community organizations and donates thousands of dollars to local schools and charities. The club also sponsors Canton’s annual Labor Day rides.

$10. Tickets can be picked up (with cash or check made out to the Canton Lions Club) in Canton at Clay Dangerfield’s State Farm Insurance Office at 80 Crossroad Hill next to Ingles or at American Cleaners at 10 Penland St. in downtown. Advanced tickets can be mailed if ordered before Aug. 21.

For more information and to purchase tickets, contact Canton Lions Club President Patrick Willis at 828.279.6195.