A comprehensive review of the town of Waynesville’s award-winning land use plan is set to begin following the town’s selection last week of a consulting company to lead the process.

The board of aldermen unanimously approved a $54,000 contract with the Lawrence Group, a regional planning firm that recently completed work on the Mountain Landscapes Initiative.

Town Planner Paul Benson called the Lawrence Group “the leading firm in the state with this type of ordinance.”

“We feel like it’s a great fit,” Benson said. “The firm can come in and tie up the loose ends, perfect our regulations and improve the readability; add good graphics to it and make it a more understandable ordinance.”

Benson has come under fire recently for being slow to move the review process along. The entire process was slated to take six months, but in November — the sixth month since the town decided to update the ordinance — Benson had yet to select a consultant to guide the review.

Benson blamed the delay on the large number of permits his office has had to review, as well as two other ongoing studies that have taken up time — the Russ Avenue Corridor Study and Pedestrian Plan.

“We may be moving slow and steady, but we are moving,” Benson told aldermen.

Benson said a town-appointed steering committee intends to meet weekly with the Lawrence Group to facilitate the process. At this point, the town will rely on the committee, not community input, to guide the review.

All told, the review will take almost a year rather than the six months originally budgeted. Benson said the six-month timeline wasn’t realistic.

“I apologize about the optimistic schedule. It wasn’t realistic given the workload we had at the time,” he said.

Mayor Gavin Brown, who has recently expressed discontent with the slow pace of the review process, said he’s ready to move it forward and won’t dwell on the delay.

“I’m not going to worry about yesterday,” he said. “We need to move forward on this.”

Alderman LeRoy Roberson told Benson to keep the town updated.

“I’d like a monthly report about what the committee was doing,” he said. “For months I was kind of in the dark.”

No South Main?

Though the review process is moving ahead, some may feel it’s leaving out the most vital part — South Main Street, a corridor that is rapidly developing due to the opening of Super Wal-Mart, Best Buy and other stores.

Benson said it was too expensive to incorporate a corridor study of South Main Street in the land use review process.

Business owners and Realtors in the South Main area have been some of the most vocal in calling for the land use plan review.

Roger Winge, a Realtor, said he wasn’t able to sell a prime parcel of land to Walgreen’s because the chain took issue with the town’s land use plan. Joe Taylor, chairman of the board of Old Town Bank, said the bank has been waiting for the land use review to be conducted before constructing a permanent building.

Benson noted that even though South Main won’t be incorporated into the town’s review process, the N.C. Department of Transportation is working on its own corridor study of the area. Benson said DOT is considering implementing a 100-foot right of way along South Main and widening it to a four-lane road with a center median, sidewalks and bike lanes.

Town officials, however, said they’d still like to see the area incorporated into a review of the land use plan.

“South Main Street is a hot spot for development right now,” said Town Manager Lee Galloway. “Maybe we can see if there’s some things that are cheaper. We need to talk to (the Lawrence Group) about some smaller scale work, possibly.”

Alderman Libba Feichter agreed that South Main Street should be included.

“I think it’s really, really important to get South Main Street right,” Feichter said. “It needs to be done right. All the advice we can get will make it a better end product.”

Benson said he will talk with the Lawrence Group to see if South Main Street can be worked into the review process.

About the land use plan

In 2003, the Waynesville town board passed a groundbreaking land-use plan that elevated the town to a state example of smart growth principles. The plan calls for landscaped parking lots, sidewalks, street trees and more attractive buildings, with the aim of making Waynesville a more walkable community. Critics of the plan have called the guidelines too onerous and say they deter commercial growth. The town is about to start a review of the plan to make sure it has been effective.

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

It’s lunchtime at the Open Door, a 12-year-old soup kitchen in the Frog Level community of Haywood County, and chatter and laughter fill the modest dining hall. Here, down-on-their-luck residents can get a free hot meal and some much-needed social support. The non-profit serves as a haven from the troubles of the outside world, say visitors.

By Michael Beadle

What would New York City be without its Statue of Liberty? Picture St. Louis without its Gateway Arch. What would towns and cities be without their signature sculptures and eye-catching murals?

By Michael Beadle

A lawyer battling personal demons returns to a small town near Pittsburgh where a sensational crime forces him to face up to following the letter of the law — even if that means letting a dangerous criminal go free.

The praise for outgoing Waynesville Mayor Henry Foy has been plentiful. Both of the other newspapers in Haywood County have beat me to the punch, publishing glowing articles and laudatory editorials.

But I’ll still add my voice to the chorus. Foy’s tenure as mayor has just about mirrored my own career as a Western North Carolina journalist. He was elected in 1991, and I moved to the mountains in the summer of 1992. I’ve gotten to know these mountain communities at the same time I’ve gotten to know Henry Foy and watched him in public life.

Setting an example

Each year I spend covering politics and local governments, my appreciation grows for those who conduct themselves with class. It’s a trait that we all recognize when we see it but perhaps have difficulty describing. And that’s exactly the point. Someone who has class earns it by cumulative action over time. It’s not something one can sum up nicely in a campaign slogan or some pithy speech.

I distinctly remember meeting Foy’s old architectural partner, Tai Lee, soon after I moved to Waynesville. Lee had this absolutely wonderful sense of humor, and his outgoing nature endeared him to many. Foy, as many well know, is much more quiet and workmanlike.

Sometime in those first few weeks in the mountains I was introduced to Foy. Ken Wilson, then publisher of The Mountaineer — I was the editor — had the very helpful habit of giving me the background on those I met. He let me know right away that Foy and Lee were prominent town fathers who were well-liked, powerful in their own right, and just good people. Ken’s instincts were usually right on.

As time passed what I learned to respect about Foy more than anything else was his dogged pursuit of those issues he felt strongly about. Though he has always been congenial and, as I said earlier, a person with class, he is also a fighter. His position as mayor was both a job and a passion, and he worked hard at it.

Old Asheville Road

Here’s a comparison that reflects absolutely positively on Foy’s influence on Waynesville. Consider the difference between driving into Waynesville on Russ Avenue from Lake Junaluska and driving from Lowe’s on the Old Asheville Highway.

Russ Avenue is a wide ribbon of asphalt with absolutely no attention to landscaping or pedestrian amenities. Its design encourages drivers to just fly along. Nearly every time I’m on that road my instinct is to go faster than the posted speed limit.

On Old Asheville Highway, the opposite is true. Its landscaped medians, sidewalks, traffic circle and other design elements encourage drivers to slow down and be careful. It also looks pretty darn nice for what it is — a road.

Foy and the rest of the Waynesville aldermen and staff fought hard to get that road, and they wanted even more pedestrian amenities. The county commissioners at the time wanted a road exactly like Russ Avenue. As editor of the community paper, that was one of the first issues I took on. We editorialized time and again for more planning, re-thinking design plans, viewing this roadway as an entrance to Waynesville and not just another highway.

It was a long time coming, but the state Department of Transportation for the most part came around to the town’s vision. A series of work sessions in which the public took part with experts led to a process that had community buy-in and resulted in what we now have.

Foy played a critical role, and by my estimation it was the first time a community in this region forced DOT to re-design a road and come up with something better. Now, towns in the region stand up to DOT all the time.

Recreation for all

The second great fight I remember Foy taking center stage in was for the recreation center that opened about eight years ago in Waynesville.

Haywood Regional Medical Center had only just opened its beautiful fitness center, and there was a general consensus among many in Haywood County that if Waynesville built its own it would fail. Not enough people in the county, they said.

Foy, however, did not waver. I remember hearing him speak about the need to build a place where children could go, a recreation center versus a fitness center. He had help on this one from the likes of Bob Brannon, who also knows how to stand up for what he believes in, and many others. Again, I was editor at The Mountaineer at the time and we believed just as strongly in the need to build a place for children that would provide an anchor for the town’s Vance Street Park.

Foy and the recreations supporters succeeded, and now Waynesville has a park complex that is the envy of much larger towns.

A regional influence

Part of why I admired Foy so much is that our views were very similar on many of the important issues that have faced Waynesville and other mountain communities. He saw the wisdom in building the county justice center downtown, in preserving the town’s watershed, in developing a groundbreaking land-use plan and in supporting Waynesville’s Main Street program.

These are not political beliefs but quality-of-life values. Because of the stance Waynesville took on many of these issues — and Foy had plenty of support from other elected officials, town staff and many in the community — this is a great place to live.

And other mountain towns and communities have looked at Waynesville as a leader and emulated it in many ways. In other words, the influence of a well-run town reaches beyond its borders. I travel to public hearings and town and county meetings throughout the region, and without fail I’ll hear these other leaders mention Waynesville’s successes.

Foy left his mark, and it’s one that will endure for some time in Western North Carolina.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

By Michael Beadle

Terry Painter and his wife Anita love collecting ornaments for their Christmas tree each year, but they found that fewer and fewer ornaments bore any connection to the actual holiday.

By Michael Beadle

So many of us have what Waynesville librarian Kathy Olsen calls “thing stories.”

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

Sarge’s Animal Rescue has scrapped its plans to build a no-kill animal shelter in a location that was fiercely opposed by nearby residents.

The Haywood County non-profit originally won approval to build the shelter on Oct. 9 by asking the board of aldermen for a text amendment that would allow for animal shelters to be a permitted use in the Hall Top Road Rural District, a residential area located off Russ Avenue near K-Mart in Waynesville.

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

It’s a typical neighborhood with houses, trees, bikes in the yard, a basketball goal and — an animal shelter?

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

It’s lunchtime in downtown Hazelwood, and the small area’s only parking lot of roughly 30 spaces is jam-packed. People jump out of their cars to grab a bite to eat, a haircut, medications, or a cup of coffee from the various businesses in this section of Waynesville.