Buying alcohol will become a lot more convenient for residents in Haywood County.

For the first time in 43 years, a new ABC store will be constructed in Waynesville.

The second location will be situated behind Hardee’s on South Main Street and will be accessed off the entrance drive into Wal-Mart. It will likely capture traffic from all over the county, snagging a greater share of ABC profits distributed in Haywood County.

For now, the Waynesville ABC board is close to finalizing the deal but is still awaiting approval from the state ABC commission.

“Everything’s looking pretty good right now,” said Waynesville ABC Chairman Earl Clark. “It’s a real ideal spot.”

The property itself will cost between $450,000 and $500,000, according to Clark. The store, which will measure about 5,000 square feet, will cost approximately $500,000 to construct.

Waynesville’s original ABC store was built in 1967 and is far too small, Clark said. The ABC board has been anxious to build a new store for several years.

“Our store is just small,” said Clark. “We have no way of displaying and stocking like a lot of the larger stores do.”

With only two alcohol shipments each month from Raleigh and little storage space, it’s been tough for the store to replenish stock.

The convenience of neighboring Wal-Mart might increase revenues for the ABC board, but the Town of Waynesville and Haywood County might not see a payoff any time soon.

Town Manager Lee Galloway said the additional expenses of debt payment, personnel and utilities will scoop up much of the new revenue generated by the store for years to come.

“I do think because of the cost of the store and the personnel involved, the town’s revenues are going down, not up,” said Galloway.

Local governments will only realize the full benefit of the new store when it is paid off.

The town estimates that it’ll receive $94,000 from ABC profits this year. Last year, the town got $112,000, which was spent on law enforcement and alcohol education.

Alternatively, the Town of Maggie Valley has received no money from ABC’s profits in the last few years. A second ABC store was built on Dellwood Road there in 2009.

“We’ve been allowing them to keep the excess to help pay for the second store,” said Tim Barth, town manager for Maggie Valley.

The town annexed a satellite tract a mile outside town limits to get a parcel close to Waynesville, grabbing customers who’d usually travel to Waynesville’s ABC store.

The ABC board in Maggie set aside money years in advance to buy inventory for the new store and save up for the debt payments.

Maggie’s second store was successful in luring customers away from Waynesville’s ABC store, due to its strategic geographic location that’s closer to Waynesville than Maggie. Sales rose for the Maggie Valley ABC board in 2008-2009, but not enough to save the board from landing in the red.

According to annual reports from the town of Maggie Valley, the ABC board operated at a loss of $5,600 in the ’08-’09 year. In comparison, the board’s income from operations in the 2007-2008 fiscal year was a solid $72,479.

Revenues at both the Maggie Valley and Waynesville ABC stores will likely be adversely affected by alcohol sales at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino. Liquor sales at the casino started in late 2009.

Is privatization on the way?

Talks of privatizing liquor sales in North Carolina may hinder Waynesville’s plans for a second Alcoholic Beverage Control store.

The governor has appointed a committee to study reform of the ABC system, including the possibility of privatizing alcohol sales.

Calls for reform were sounded after it was discovered that two ABC staffers in New Hanover County were being paid a combined $350,000 annually. Meanwhile, liquor industry representatives had treated Mecklenburg County ABC board staffers to multiple lavish meals, with one tab totaling $12,700.

Earl Clark, chairman of the Waynesville ABC board, said his board would be hesitant to build a new store if the state decides to follow through with privatization and end the monopoly of ABC boards.

“There’s no doubt that it would affect us because we don’t want to do something that we’d lose money or the town would lose money,” said Clark.

Clark said though the system could use reform, privatizing the system would prove harmful for local governments that get a cut of the profits.

“I think that it would hurt the town and the county on their distribution,” said Clark

Waynesville is a leader when it comes walkable communities, according to a consultant hired to develop a long-range pedestrian plan for the town.

“I would like to say this is a unique situation,” Terry Snow with Wilbur Smith Associates told the town board during a meeting last month. “We came into a town that already had a pedestrian plan in place. You are already doing this and doing a great job.”

The town systematically analyzes its sidewalk system for where missing links are needed. It builds new sections each year, gradually building out the network. The town has a short greenway and a master plan to extend it. It even requires commercial developers to build sidewalks as part of new construction, whether it’s Super Wal-Mart or a hair salon.

Mayor Gavin Brown said the town board has placed an emphasis on creating a pedestrian-friendly community.

“We believe it is an important part of the social fabric of our community,” Brown said. “We firmly believe in the concept of ‘build it and they will walk.’”

After a year-long process, Snow presented the finished product of a long-range pedestrian plan to the town board. It outlines immediate sidewalk priorities, plus those five, 10 and 15 years from now.

“I think it is wonderful to have these kind of points out in the future that we need to meet,” said Alderwoman Libba Feichter. “This board is committed to enhancing our walkable community, and I believe this community is committed to that.”

The pedestrian plan was funded with a grant from the N.C. Department of Transportation. Public input was sought at meetings and in surveys.

“There was overwhelming support for having an interconnected system,” Snow said of the public input. People wanted more sidewalks, more greenways and less speeding.

The consultant made just one recommendation: way-finding signage. These customized signs are often mounted on eye-level posts pointing the way to shops, parks and the like.

Not all developers are fans of the town’s sidewalk requirement. Some question why they should build a sidewalk in front of their building when the property to either side doesn’t have one.

“It’s the age-old problem of putting in a sidewalk to nowhere,” Snow said. “But it is harder to build a continuous sidewalk project. It is a lot easier to fill in the gaps.”

The reason is funding, which can be scarce while building sidewalks are expensive.

There has been talk of giving developers the option of paying into a sidewalk kitty, which the town could apply to somewhere else in town if a particular development genuinely doesn’t warrant a sidewalk.

It all started with a stranger’s death.

At the time, Carl Hughes was working as a construction supervisor for the oil corporation Chevron in Angola.

A worker came into his office to ask permission to take the afternoon off to bury his daughter, who had died from malaria.

The announcement left Hughes stunned.

While the Waynesville resident has caught malaria a whopping eight times during his years working abroad, he’d always had access to premier medical treatment. For Hughes, malaria was akin to a bad case of the flu.

But others were not so lucky.

For the next few weeks, Hughes racked his brain, trying to come up with a way to help.

“God was thumping on my head,” said Hughes. “I had no idea what to do about it. I knew I needed to do something.”

Hughes began researching insect repellents that could help prevent the deadly mosquito-borne disease. He hoped to formulate an all-natural spray without DEET, despite knowing that those kinds of bug sprays hadn’t found much success.

When Hughes returned to Waynesville for a month-long break, he worked in his garage, toiling to put together a natural bug spray that worked. Hughes went on an all-out mission, devouring all the information he could hunt down on essential oils, their properties, and aromatherapy.

“My wife thought I was nuts,” said Hughes, who had a background in engineering, not chemistry.

The result was Whup-A-Bug, an all-natural insect repellent that has earned national and even worldwide attention.

Hughes hauled cases of the spray back to Africa along with him to hand out for free. A chief in one village told him malaria had been reduced by almost 70 percent as a result of the repellent.

Word of mouth led to higher demand, so Hughes mixed up the solution and sent them to his friends and acquaintances, but never for a profit.

“We weren’t in the business of making insect repellent, we just did it,” said Hughes.

But two years ago, Hughes decided to focus on Whup-A-Bug full-time and quit his job, setting up shop in a Waynesville factory.

Despite the struggles inherent in running a small-business startup targeting a nationwide audience, Hughes has been able to achieve remarkable things.

He’s fought for a U.S. patent for his formula, been knighted by an ancient Christian organization, and recently been contacted by The Discovery Channel for a two-part profile series.

Hughes regularly sends his product to camps for children with blood disorders and other life-ending diseases, like Victory Junction Camp, sponsored by NASCAR.

“For the first time children could go into the woods without fear of getting bitten, on top of their fragile medical condition,” said Hughes.

Hughes occasionally still donates his repellent to villages in Angola, though he says he’s finding it harder to find a messenger who can personally deliver the product.

Reclaiming the

all-natural name

Based on his research, Hughes discovered there was only one reason why all-natural repellents weren’t working well — greed.

According to Hughes, major companies only put enough essential oils in a product to be able to proclaim that it’s all-natural. The measly amounts are not enough to be effective for long, but they save the company money.

“They always include citronella, but only put 1 percent or 3 percent active ingredients in,” said Hughes. “Our product is 15.3 percent active.”

Hughes said everything he needed for his product to be effective could already be found in nature.

“There are oils that insects will not come close to,” said Hughes. “That’s what’s in this product.”

What was revolutionary about Hughes’ insect repellent is how he formulated it.

Hughes used cedarwood, lemongrass, citronella and rosemary, but was first to figure out how to combine those four oils to their maximum strength, so that one oil doesn’t overpower another.

His unique method has resulted in a patent for Whup-A-Bug after 11 months of fighting for it with the U.S. government. Achieving a patent is a major milestone for an all-natural product, according to Hughes.

Still, the cloud of misleading labels on products hangs over Whup-A-Bug, threatening its success. Hughes would like the public to be better educated on the all-natural labeling that’s sometimes slapped on not-so-natural products.

While the Environmental Protection Agency requires companies to register insect repellents, classified as a pesticide, companies have used a loophole to avoid being registered — and regulated.

Companies can bypass registration if their ingredients are “demonstrably” safe for the intended use.

Hughes said companies often break down essential oils into chemical components and use the cheaper chemicals rather than the essential oils in their product.

Meanwhile, Hughes said he hands over $21,000 each year to the EPA to register his product nationwide.

Hughes said the public simply doesn’t know the difference.

“They don’t know all these games that are being played out there,” said Hughes. “The EPA doesn’t have the manpower or the resources to go after all these people.”

Hughes recently served on a group of small business owners who advised the EPA and Small Business Administration on this particular exemption.

Hughes said it’s hard to compete with other insect repellents lining the shelves at stores, claiming to be all-natural just like Whup-A-Bug. But he is positive that Whup-A-Bug is the better value if the customer considers the amount of active ingredients in each bottle.

“The biggest challenge is getting people to try it,” said Hughes. “Once they try it, cost doesn’t become a factor.”

Growing success

Hughes hasn’t had the luxury of millions of dollars to launch an advertising campaign nationwide. But distributors from across the country have somehow taken notice of Whup-A-Bug.

“The only reason this product is where it’s at right now is because of word of mouth,” said Hughes. “That tells me it works.”

The company’s equine products have especially taken off, causing distributers of animal care products to beat on Hughes’ door.

Melissa Fischbach, owner of The Baroque Horse Store in Northern California, found Hughes’ product after launching an extensive search for a bug spray that was not only effective but also environmentally safe and non-toxic to sell at her store.

“I found all these qualities in Whup-A-Bug,” said Fischbach. “All of my customers have been impressed by its effectiveness. I’ve had many repeat customers.”

Beyond insect repellent for humans and horses, Hughes has formulated flea and tick sprays for cats and dogs, and sprays for the home.

Hughes says he has formulated 61 products, though many of them still have to go through Federal Drug Administration testing.

Whup-A-Bug spray is also being used in the mess halls and barracks of Fort Rucker in Alabama, according to Hughes. In addition, the poultry industry is testing the product.

“We’re talking to everybody,” said Hughes, who utilizes everything from e-mails to blogs to publicize his product.

Hughes recently inked a deal with Lebermuth, one of the largest natural oil suppliers in the country. The partnership will greatly boost Whup-A-Bug’s ability to supply major distributors across the United States.

Still, all that did not come without hard work and devotion to the product. Hughes said it has been a daily test of survival to keep the business afloat.

Hughes hopes to someday employ about 20 people in Waynesville. For now, he’s working with the help of two other employees.

While investors have previously come knocking on Hughes’ door seeking to invest $5 million and own a 75 percent share, which is normal for most ventures, Hughes refused.

“As bad as I need money, I said no. I won’t sell control,” said Hughes, who believes the first step the investors will take is to dilute the product back to 1 percent and simply use the Whup-A-Bug name to make profits.

The Discovery Channel recently contacted Hughes to include him on a two-part documentary for its Profiles series.

He hesitated to let them film his story, since he was simply not ready to manufacture on a nationwide scale just yet.

Hughes imagined 20 million people phoning Whup-A-Bug, as he stared at two cases of supply on his shelf.

Now that Hughes has a deal with Lebermuth, he’s ready for The Discovery Channel to come into the picture.

Journey to knighthood

Though Hughes has traveled to about 14 countries in his lifetime, Whup-A-Bug has taken him to places he would never have expected.

Last November, Hughes was knighted at St. John’s Cathedral in New York City and accepted into the Knights of Malta, a worldwide organization that started in the year 1081.

Hughes was knighted along with 20 others, including the former president of Okinawa in Japan. Hughes had been nominated for his humanitarian work preventing cases of malaria in African villages.

It was an unbelievable experience steeped in tradition, Hughes said.

He was booked into a hotel right on Broadway, just a few doors down from Carnegie Hall. A limousine picked Hughes and the other initiates up from the hotel and took them to the old cathedral.

“Everything was just totally awe-inspiring,” said Hughes.

“It’s hard to believe that I was even involved.”

All the officials streamed into the church wearing their robes with the symbolic Maltese cross, as a priest asked the group to stand and give an oath of allegiance. They vowed to dedicate their lives to the purpose of God, and help and protect underprivileged people.

One by one, each new member was called up to be knighted with a sword.

“It was so humbling,” said Hughes.

Despite achieving official knighthood status, Hughes says he doesn’t use the title that goes with it.

“My neighbor calls me Sir Carl all the time,” said Hughes. “A lot of people at the church do it, but I don’t use it.”

Buy some

Whup-A-Bug is sold locally at Ace Hardware Store and Tarheels Guns and Gunsmithing in Waynesville and on the company’s Web site at www.whupabug.com.

Any actor or director at Haywood Arts Regional Theater will tell you there’s nothing wrong with “The Sound of Music.” Or “Oklahoma” for that matter.

But that doesn’t mean they want to spend all season shuffling through seasoned classics, singing songs everyone already knows by heart.

Each year, HART gets a whole winter season to experiment and explore, bringing plays that have long intrigued actors and directors to its more intimate, 75-seat Feichter Studio Stage.

Feichter plays in recent years have included “Equus,” a story of a young man who is sexually fascinated by horses; “Wit,” in which an English university professor grapples with a terminal case of ovarian cancer; “The Full Monty,” involving six unemployed men who resort to becoming strippers; and “Coyote on the Fence,” which tells the tale of a racist skinhead on death row.

HART’s latest play, Pulitzer-winning “Doubt: A Parable,” is about a priest suspected of sexually abusing a boy in the ‘60s.

Despite an ending that leaves audiences with more questions than answers, “Doubt” sold out its first weekend and was held over for a second weekend of showings.

A sizeable segment of HART’s audience is clearly enthused by the community theater’s daring spirit. It’s not unusual for the theater to turn away people at the door during its winter season, which has raised the bar for theater-lovers in the area.

“Our audience has come to expect us to not do the same thing,” said Steve Lloyd, HART’s executive director. “Lots of theaters underestimate their audiences and want to play it safe by doing ‘The Sound of Music’ again.”

Audiences aren’t the only pleased party. Community actors and directors are delighted to have the opportunity to tackle more serious projects.

“It’s a great theater for letting actors experiment,” said Suzanne Tinsley, one of the founding members of HART and director of the recent “Doubt.”

Art O’Neil, who has acted with HART for a decade, said he’s had his share of traditional plays.

“I’m beyond it,” said O’Neil. “If I’m going to put the energy into it, pick something that’s going to challenge me.”

O’Neil said he has witnessed a shift in HART’s standing over the years, one that he applauds.

“I think there’s a fairly long line now of plays that are not the traditional small-town community theater plays,” said O’Neil. “Ten years ago, we probably could not have done a play that had a curse word in it.”

Since then, the theater has tackled topics like homosexuality and racism and even the raciness of “Cabaret,” where scantily clad thespians greeted theater-goers right at the door.

But HART isn’t choosing these plays just to stir up controversy. A sincere desire to challenge itself and audiences is at the root of HART’s motives. Plays worthy of city stages are the result.

“I don’t have to go to New York, I don’t have to go to Atlanta to see it,” said O’Neil. “It’s not professional theater, but it comes darn close at times.”

While HART isn’t afraid to go on the cutting edge, it’s not going to force the entire community into joining the journey. Whenever the theater publicizes potentially controversial plays, it affixes a warning about adult content.

And it’s not like HART totally ignores it settings, a few modifications here and there are made.

For example, at the culmination of “The Full Monty,” HART actors actually went through with the striptease, ending up completely naked on stage — but a blinding bright light behind them completely concealed them from the audience.

The play was a huge hit.

In preparing for the stunt, Lloyd and others actually moved through the auditorium, ensuring that the view would only entail a bright light and nothing else, no matter where one was seated.

“It ended up being funny,” said Lloyd. “The audience laughed .... They realized we weren’t going to take people off the deep end.”

For upcoming plays at HART, look no farther than what’s already on Broadway. Lloyd frequently picks up plays that have just become available, like “Chicago,” which was just released to community theaters six months ago.

“I want us to be leading the bandwagon, not following it,” said Lloyd.

For that hard work, HART has won numerous awards, all of which have been handed to plays originating from its smaller stage.

Although its Feichter stage has been successful, there will continue to be a diverse mix of plays at HART with, hopefully, something for everyone.

Lloyd says he compares the theater’s offerings to a dinner menu, making sure to include both hearty and delightful offerings.

“There’s going to be puff pastry, but I’m not going to serve you seven courses of that,” said Lloyd.

Upcoming plays at HART

• “Beyond Therapy” – March 5-7

• “Seussical” – April 23-May 9, weekends

• “Falling in Like” – June 4-13, weekends

• “Chicago” – July 9-Aug. 1, weekends

• “Catfish Moon” – Aug. 27-Sept. 7, weekends

• “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story”– Sept. 24-Oct. 17, weekends.

• “The Little Foxes” – Nov. 5-14, weekends.

There’s free wireless up for grabs to anyone ambling down Main Street in Waynesville, but it’s so obscure that even those who work downtown are oblivious to its existence.

When tourists file into stores and restaurants asking where they can find wireless internet access — a common occurrence — employees point them to the few businesses nearby that offer it rather than ask them to simply step back outside and flip their laptops open on the sidewalk.

On the other hand, those who are in the know about the amenity also know that it has worked poorly in the past.

“We actually did have quite a few phone calls that it wasn’t working over the last year,” said Buffy Messer, director of the Downtown Waynesville Association. “Some of the phone calls we received were from frustrated folks.”

Messer said she has seen visitors using the wireless over the summer, but she hesitates to actively publicize it because of its hit-or-miss status.

“My understanding is that it works, but that it does not work particularly well,” said Alison Melnikova, assistant town manager of Waynesville.

“It certainly never developed the way we anticipated,” said Town Manager Lee Galloway.

Meanwhile, the telecommunications company that runs it, Wynncom, said it was unaware of any problems until Smoky Mountain News contacted its headquarters in Lexington. N.C.

“We weren’t aware of that,” said owner Jimmy Wynn. “Nobody had complained about it.”

No one called up the company, because no entity in Waynesville is expressly responsible for ensuring the wireless works — or for that matter, advertising it to the public.

“It’s something that I think the private sector needs to promote rather than the Town of Waynesville,” said Galloway.

The free, public wireless access supposedly went live three years ago. Wynncom offered it as a free bonus to the Town of Waynesville, while bargaining with Haywood County to land a contract to install a fiberoptic line.

That endeavor hasn’t gone well, either. Haywood County filed a lawsuit against Wynncom after it failed to deliver adequate telephone services on the fiberoptic line.

The county recently dropped the suit and bought the fiberoptic line from the company, deciding to go with another telecommunications company for services instead.

Wireless plans originally called for an antennae on the roof of town hall and a repeater on the roof of the historic courthouse to provide coverage the length of Main Street. But the courthouse antennae was never installed, which Wynn blamed on renovations to the historic building over the years.

But David Cotton, Haywood county manager, said Wynncom has never requested access to install any equipment on the courthouse roof.

While Haywood County has expressed interest in independently setting up free wireless inside the courthouse on Main Street, the recession has blocked progress on that goal.

“We definitely want to get wireless Internet access inside the justice center and courthouse,” said Kristy Wood, director of information technology for the county. “That’s been a goal that we’ve had for over a year. Under such tight budget constraints, we haven’t been able to move forward.”

The wireless would be especially useful to journalists covering government meetings and lawyers during court proceedings, Wood said.

Wynncom says it has now fixed the wireless, which is supposed to be accessible along Main Street from the Town of Waynesville building to the Haywood County courthouse. But the signal decidedly loses its strength as users near the courthouse.

The router had been working, but services were still down, Wynn said.

On street only

There is, however, one lingering problem with the wireless: misunderstandings about what it’s for.

Internet junkies who want to hole up inside a building on Main Street perusing the Internet for hours for free are out of luck. The connection is only meant to be accessible outside.

“Nothing more,” said John Howell, a telecommunications consultant in Haywood County who negotiated the contract. “Anything else would have simply been extra.”

It’s aimed to serve visitors — not businesses or apartment dwellers downtown looking for a way around paying for internet service.

“It was not the intent to provide free access to people that can pay for it,” said Wynn. “It was not designed for a company to use for their benefit for nothing.”

Amanda Collier, manager of Ceviches on Main, said she had no idea that free wireless was available outside the restaurant, but she acknowledged the benefits of having the amenity.

For example, tourists could quickly look up directions to nearby attractions by simply jumping on their laptops.

“It’d be a lot easier, a lot more convenient,” said Collier.

But after learning about the wireless, Stuart Smith, an employee at Pheasant Hill, said the service doesn’t make much sense on Main Street. Few would find it convenient to take to the streets with their laptops in tow.

“Unless there’s more café seating, I don’t think it’s very useful,” said Stuart Smith.

Owen Thorp, an O’Malley’s employee, pointed out one other downside of offering wireless outside only: battery life.

“I’d never use it...my battery only lasts a minute and a half,” said Thorp.

Skateboard enthusiasts in Waynesville will be happy to hear the town has been busily preparing for a long-awaited skate park on Vance Street near the recreation center.

The town board recently dropped $28,500 on a California firm called Spohn Ranch Skateparks to design the park, marking notable progress in a process that’s crawled for more than a decade.

The board unanimously agreed it was time to move forward.

“We beat this horse about as much as we can beat it,” said Mayor Gavin Brown.

“I think this is a giant step forward in reaching our goal,” said Rhett Langston, Waynesville’s recreation director.

The town is also applying for a $60,000 state Parks and Recreation Trust Fund grant to help fund construction.

While the town failed to lock in the same state grant last year, having a concrete design plan in hand might improve their chances this go-around.

“To have this plan in place to show them you really are enthused about doing it, I think it will be help us with the grant,” said Alderman Gary Caldwell, the most ardent supporter of the skate park on the town board.

Even if the town lands the grant, it still faces the challenge of scraping up an equal amount in matching funds and paying for the remainder of the cost.

The town will learn in early May if it has won the coveted grant.

Langston said it is difficult right now to even speculate on the total cost of the skate park. After hiring the design firm, the town has $41,500 remaining of the original $70,000 set aside for the park. It also holds a generous $20,000 grant from the Waynesville Kiwanis Club.

To supplement that sum, the recreation department continues to fundraise by selling bricks with personalized messages for a walkway leading up to the park. So far, they’ve raised $2,900.

Having a conceptual design plan in hand could also aid fundraising efforts, according to town officials.

“If you just tell someone, ‘We want to build a skate park. Will you donate?’ they might. But if you show them, ‘This is what we want to build,’ your chances of getting participation may be a lot better,” said Lee Galloway, Waynesville town manager.

“Local skaters will have something in their hands to show this is what we’re looking for, this is the cause,” said Langston.

The town considers it absolutely essential that skaters throw their two cents in, since it doesn’t want to invest in a skate park that they didn’t like.

“If we’re going to do it, let’s just do it right from the beginning,” said Langston.

More on the park

The Waynesville Kiwanis and Parks and Recreation Skate Park will be located in a fenced-in, outdoor facility on the site of the former horse ring on Vance Street. It will join the sprawling town recreation complex along Richland Creek, where playgrounds, tennis courts, picnic shelters, ball fields, a greenway, a dog park, a track, and the Waynesville Recreation Center are clustered.

The park would be free to use, but skaters would be required to pay a small registration fee so the Parks and Recreation Department can keep track of who is using the facility.

For now, skaters still have to deal with a town ban on skateboards on sidewalks and most town streets. Violators face a $50 fine and the possibility of having their boards confiscated.

Those interested in purchasing a brick, making a donation, or volunteering for the fundraising committee are asked to contact Langston at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 828.456.2030.

The Waynesville Public Art Commission recently issued a Call for Artists for its fourth public art project. The proposed art will celebrate the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and its historic relationship to Waynesville.

For many years an arched sign hung across Main Street declaring Waynesville the “Eastern Entrance to the Smokies.” Long-time residents will recall that the archway was near the intersection of Main and Depot Streets, near the former First National Bank. This is also the intersection where Franklin D. Roosevelt made his entrance into Waynesville while promoting the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1936.

The former bank site is now the location of a town “mini-park” which is scheduled for rehabilitation in 2010. Using funds that have been donated specifically for the improvement of the park, the town plans to revitalize the area by improving access, landscaping, lighting, and encouraging more usage of the mini-park. The existing rock perimeter walls will remain, but must be brought into proper code adherence by the installation of a railing along Depot Street. This provides an opportunity to meet functional needs in an aesthetic manner.

The Public Art Commission has requested that interested artists submit designs for a 69-foot railing that will incorporate artistic elements relating to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and its historical connection to Waynesville. The artist must reside in either North Carolina or Tennessee, the two states contiguous with the Park, and must submit a portfolio of past works for review. The Call for Artists and other public art information can be viewed on the Town’s website at www.townofwaynesville.org.

Three artists will be chosen from the applicants to make a presentation of their finalized plans to an advisory panel of 35-40 community and arts supporters. After reviewing comments of the panel, the Public Art Commission will decide on a finalist to receive the commission of $20,000.

The $20,000 commission will be raised from private sources, and the public is invited to make a donation to the Public Art Fund. Checks should be made payable to the Town of Waynesville Public Art Fund, and should be mailed to P.O. Box 1409, Waynesville, NC 28786 in care of Downtown Waynesville Association. Donations may be tax deductible.

The other works commissioned by the Public Art Commission include “Old Time Music,” the paver project in front of the new police station, and “Celebrating Folkmoot.”

The installation will coincide with the refurbishment of the park and should be completed by fall 2010. For more information, contact 828.627.0928.

At a time when Waynesville’s appearance standards are under scrutiny for being too strict, three proposed developments cruised past the town’s Community Appearance Commission.

Last week, the advisory board approved the Noland Retail Center and Holland Car Wash, both on South Main Street near Wal-Mart, and a new Verizon Wireless store on Russ Avenue.

Such smooth sailing for these three projects seems incongruous with claims that the standards are potentially driving developers away.

But there are easy explanations for why these projects passed the community appearance board relatively quickly, said Daniel Hyatt, landscape architect and project manager for the Noland Retail Center and Holland Car Wash.

According to Hyatt, developers who hire local designers are generally familiar with the types of developments the town desires. They can draft a site plan that meets the standards without revisiting the drawing board multiple times. The retail center and the car wash proved that by passing the appearance board on their first try.

But that approval alone is insufficient to begin building, as the appearance board serves only in an advisory capacity.

“Make no mistake, we still have a sizeable amount of work to do on both of these projects to make the letter of the ordinance,” said Hyatt, who recused himself as chairman of the community appearance board to present the two projects.

Corporate developers usually come to the table with the same site plans they’ve used time and again. These are the developers who are less likely to bend to the will of the town.

“When they come into a community like Waynesville that has fairly restrictive design requirements, then they have a lot of difficulty,” said Hyatt. “It gives them a lot of heartburn.”

None of the three projects will have to come back to the board unless there’s a drastic change in the site plan, Hickox said.

Scrutinizing the standards

While the design standards promote pedestrian usage, they don’t take into account auto-centric businesses, like drive-thrus, car washes and pay-at-the-pump gas stations.

The town’s standards push parking lots to the side or rear of buildings rather than in front — a move aimed at creating a more appealing streetscape where attractive building facades, instead of asphalt, take center stage. But some businesses were left out.

“Nobody thought when they put the land development standards in, how are we going to make a gas station work under these,” said Hickox.

The steering committee that’s reviewing the land development standards has also placed the appearance commission under the microscope.

Since the standards went into effect in 2003, the appearance board has sometimes been stymied because it can only make recommendations to developers, not demands.

The other obstacle in the commission’s path is that it is the first stop in the permit chain, very early on in the process.

“At which time, a lot of the details aren’t really worked out,” said Hyatt.

Developers can only paint pictures with broad brushstrokes for the appearance board. For example, they can only point out where the large trees or small trees might go, not provide details like the genus and species of every plant.

As the steering committee works to improve the standards and take these concerns into account, the public is invited to take part.

Anyone can get involved in the process by crafting and presenting a well-thought amendment, Hickox said.

Hyatt himself appreciates the chance to work on the standards before they are vetted by the public, town board and town staff.

“It’s nice to be clued in on the front of this discussion,” said Hyatt.

Waynesville’s land-use plan is an ambitious set of ideas adopted during a booming economic era and thus full of the optimism of such times. Now that times are tougher, we hope task force members charged with updating the plan don’t forsake its guiding principles, a pedestrian-friendly new urbanism that is well-suited to meet future challenges.

Waynesville’s regulations guiding development and growth were adopted in 2002 after 29 months of public input. The rules address everything from building placement on lots to landscaping and signs, and the plan is marked by a decidedly liberal mixed-use philosophy that allows contrasting uses in close proximity as long as certain standards are met.

Since its adoption, there have been many flashpoints as town leaders sought to allay the concerns of builders and developers and address flaws in the plan. Finally, the decision was made to appoint a blue-ribbon task force to update the regulations, and that group has been working for months on modifications.

As expected, parking is one most contentious issues. Current regulations guide parking to the rear of buildings, creating a street wall that re-creates a downtown look rather than the traditional setbacks that give parking lots the dominant spot in nearly all commercial development. A big question is whether this look — examples include the CVS pharmacy and McDonald’s on Russ Avenue — forces too many concessions from business owners, and whether it is practical at all as one of the plan’s guiding philosophies.

We think it is. While concessions can be made in certain areas of town and on particular lots, we believe strongly that the pedestrian-guided growth will remain popular. Years fly by fast, and this land-use plan needs to look to the future. We’re not talking about next year or even five years from now, but more like 25 or 30 years down the road.

A couple of decades from now more people will be walking and biking, and we will have more mass transit. More and more people have decided that protecting what’s special about their communities is tied to the personal choices they make. In other words, shopping near one’s home and not being so dependant on the automobile and fossil fuels are important if our small towns are to thrive. This kind of future fits perfectly with the new urbanism land-use model that Waynesville has adopted.

As is always the case, the future depends on what happens now. Waynesville has to modify its land-use plan to fix the flaws, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The new urbanism model will evolve, but it is growing in popularity for many very important and essential reasons. Communities who get on board early — and stay the course — will reap the benefits in the decades to come.

A movement is afoot to roll back some of the smart growth principles of Waynesville’s land-use plan by loosening commercial development guidelines.

A blue-ribbon committee appointed by the town has spent the past few months combing through the town’s land-use plan, which espouses a progressive “new urbanism” philosophy.

The plan promotes pedestrian-friendly development and aesthetic standards for commercial development in an attempt to preserve small-town character. Several members of the committee question whether the new urbanism model is realistic, however.

Joe Taylor, one of committee members, said the ideals in the land-use plan are utopian and don’t take current development patterns into account.

“It can be done if you start with a clean sheet of paper. If we are going to create a new town, fine, go for it,” Taylor said.

The committee’s composition is weighted toward business interests.

“We have people on that board making recommendations that make sense for doing business,” Taylor said.

Public Works Director Fred Baker said that commercial interests were perhaps underrepresented on the citizen task force that helped write the land-use plan earlier this decade. The current blue-ribbon committee was constituted to give them a voice, especially given their ongoing complaints over the regulations.

Ron Leatherwood, a contractor on the committee, said he didn’t get involved when the town was writing the guidelines, despite literally dozens of public input meetings held over the course of three years.

“A lot of us in the business community didn’t realize the consequence of the written word on the table,” Leatherwood said. “At the end of the day, I am not seeing us doing a great deal of changes except in two or three areas. We have to have some type of hybrid of this.”

But Baker isn’t sure a hybrid is possible. Baker has long had the 13 principles of new urbanism tacked up on the wall of his office. He said they work in unison, and if you ignore more than two or three, the whole vision collapses.

Leatherwood questioned whether Waynesville in general has the population to support new urbanism. The concept is based on people living, working and shopping in a close-knit, pedestrian-friendly environment, but it relies on residential populations being able to support nearby mixed-use commercial districts.

Taylor also wonders whether the model is possible today. Society no longer functions like it did in the 1950s, when people walked to their neighborhood grocer, Taylor said. But advocates of new urbanism want to remake society by forcing commercial developments into a mold that doesn’t work on the ground, Taylor added.

Parking lot saga

One of the most contentious points addressed by the committee is parking lot configurations for new commercial development. The town’s plan bans parking lots directly in front of buildings. By placing parking to the rear and side of businesses instead, the streetscape is defined by building facades, sidewalks and street trees rather than expansive asphalt parking lots.

Despite the aesthetic benefits, the regulation is not always practical, according to some committee members.

“Parking, as we knew going into it, is probably going to be the biggest issue,” said Town Planner Paul Benson. “I think they all feel like we are being too restrictive by not allowing any parking in front of the building. Certainly we have heard that from the development community.”

Taylor said it is ridiculous to ban parking in front of buildings.

“People tend to go where the crowd is,” Taylor said. “That is pretty much human nature to say, ‘That place is doing business, let’s go in there.’ Hide all the vehicles and you take that factor away.”

Baker said the purpose of the rule is to create an “active pedestrian environment.”

“That is difficult to do if you have only left a little strip of sidewalk between the parking lot and road. It visually sets the automobile above all other considerations,” Baker said.

Craig Lewis, a planning consultant with the Lawrence Group in the town of Davidson who is steering the review process, said auto-centric development doesn’t stand the test of time. One strip mall is simply abandoned by shoppers and merchants alike when a new one comes along.

“Areas that are pedestrian friendly have become more successful than areas that are automobile friendly,” Lewis said. “We are talking about creating places that people care about.”

But Leatherwood said the “new urbanism” vision can still be achieved through other techniques to buffer the look of asphalt parking lots.

“By still having tree canopies or street walls or some kind of streetscape, you don’t have the impact of a large parking lots directly on the street,” Leatherwood said. “You can soften the street.”

Committee member Patrick McDowell pointed to a small strip mall in the greater downtown area called Haywood Square, which wouldn’t be allowed under the town’s current land-use plan.

Engineer Patrick Bradshaw countered that it’s not a bad thing to force developers to think outside the box.

“Surely we are brighter than just a strip mall duplicated time and again. What we keep trying to do is move these strip malls around. While it is suitable for some locations, we can do better,” said Bradshaw, who sits on the committee.

Lewis said Waynesville’s land-use plan has been a trendsetter.

“More and more communities are doing it, but it is still not the norm and certainly not in the mountains. I think Waynesville has led a lot of conversations in the mountains because they have said ‘We care about the aesthetics of our community,’” Lewis said.

But even Lewis isn’t a purist when it comes to no parking in front. To insist there can never be parking in front of a building is impractical, Lewis said. Lewis has proposed a compromise that would allow a portion of parking to be allowed in front of buildings in a few of the town’s high-traffic commercial areas, namely Russ Avenue, the Dellwood/Junaluska area and the interchange near the new Super Wal-Mart.

“I think it is a good compromise,” Benson said. “Some districts lend themselves to new urbanism more than others.”

But several committee members want the compromise extended to more parts of town. They also want more parking spots in the front than the limited number Lewis has proposed.

That debate has yet to fully play out and the differences of opinion could ultimately lead to a split vote in the committee’s final recommendation.

What’s next

The committee is still a few months away from making its recommendations. The task has been rigorous. The committee had been meeting every other Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. for three months, allowing the members to get on with their workday by 9 a.m. They have now ramped up the schedule to meet every week.

“It is a hard-working advisory committee,” Baker said. “The town is certainly getting a lot of work and a lot of good ideas from them.”

Baker noted that the recommendations will be just that, however.

“There might be some that don’t necessarily make it through,” Baker said.

Final approval resting with the town’s elected leaders following public input.

“I don’t see the town board wanting to reverse course completely on the parking issue,” Benson said. “I think we are all just looking for a way to add some flexibility without compromising the pedestrian focus.”