There’s still more than a year to go before the N.C. Department of Transportation starts acquiring right-of-way for the N.C. 107 project in Sylva, but businesses are already making decisions about whether to leave town, and governmental entities are already having conversations about how to entice them to stay. 

MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center will soon begin work toward an alternative vision of the N.C. 107 project in Sylva. 

During an Aug. 6 public hearing on the future of N.C. 107 in Sylva, Kel-Save owner Robert Kelley was the first to speak, delivering an impassioned treatise on the need for a plan that would do more to protect Sylva’s small business community from annihilation as right-of-way is acquired. 

While Hurricane Florence spared much of The Smoky Mountain News coverage area when it rolled through the region last week, the same can’t be said for a vast portion of the North Carolina coast, which saw rainfall totals of more than 33 inches in places. 

The Town of Sylva will take MountainTrue up on its offer to look for a better design for N.C. 107, with MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center currently working up a scope of work and timeline for the project. 

Here’s something I never thought I would say: I’m looking for a cat. Not just any cat, but a particular kind of cat, a cat with a particular set of skills. I need the Liam Neeson of cats. An assassin cat. A turbo mouser. A bloodthirsty, feral killer. A razor-thin barn cat that grew up hardscrabble, forced to fight a dozen siblings for a scrap of fish guts — or starve. 

The debate over whether the town of Bryson City should relinquish its right of way on Fry Street has resurfaced, but this time the railroad is offering the town something in exchange for the closure. 

Near the end of 2016, the North Carolina Department of Transportation announced plans for an $18 million makeover of Russ Avenue, including a disastrous modification that would have forever altered the character of one of Waynesville’s most historic neighborhoods. 

Some people’s memories of their first car are glazed with sugar, like candy apples at the county fair. It is just one species of nostalgia, I guess. A few of my classmates actually did drive cool cars, including some twins who shared a black Trans Am that was the envy of every teenage boy who had seen Burt Reynolds driving one in “Smoky and the Bandit,” which played for about 80 consecutive weekends at the Twin Oaks drive-in theater.

Sylva Town Hall was filled beyond capacity as Mayor Lynda Sossamon called a public forum on the redevelopment of N.C. 107 into session Monday, Aug. 6.