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Flat Rock News

MossColumn: Village Council's vote made road safer

Maya Richardson did not get as much ink as other commenters on the North Highland Lake Road widening project.   Read Story »

Hendersonville News

Awaiting floodplain permit, Publix edges closer to opening

Publix is filling mailboxes with slick fliers and popping up on smart phones with the promise that it’s “coming soon.” In the mailings, smiling cashiers, welcoming butchers and produce managers and delectable-looking plates of seared steak and baked salmon tease shoppers about the offerings and service at the supermarket "where shopping is a pleasure." (“No matter where you are in the store, our associates are easy to find and ready to serve.”)Muscling into a crowd of incumbent supermarkets and drug stores within a few hundred yards, the new grocery store on Greenville Highway is getting closer to completion by the day. Signs went up on Greenville Highway and White Street. Last week, crews moved the construction trailer behind the store, to clear ground for paving. Landscapers are unloading dozens of trees and bushes, so contractor Benning Construction can comply with the city’s stringent landscape requirements. One of the biggest regulatory obstacles remaining is a permit required by state and federal agencies because of the floodplain conditions, notorious locally for pushing high water up over cars’ wheel wells.A deluge of rain in May had people wondering whether Publix had made Mud Creek flooding worse, despite the fact that the contactor installed a huge underground stormwater storage system and other flood prevention measures. Halvorsen Development, the Florida-based contractor that manages construction of new stores for Publix, is still waiting for a flood control permit from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Publix can’t receive a certificate of occupancy until it gets the signoff from FEMA and the state Floodplain Mapping Program, said Susan Frady, director of the city’s Department of Development Assistance. The developer received a conditional letter of map amendment after it tried six times and failed to win a regulatory OK called a no-rise permit, which would have certified that the development on the 6-acre site in the Mud Creek floodplain would not make flood conditions worse than they currently are. The conditional letter allowed the supermarket company to start construction. To get a certificate of occupancy, Publix’s engineers have to convince regulators to drop "conditional."“They have to get everything done with all the flood stuff,” Frady said. “That’s part of their main C.O.”She had received correspondence recently from Jason Claudio-Diaz, the Kimley-Horn engineer working on the application, “so I know he’s working on it.”“We don’t have that yet,” Halvorsen president Tom Vincent said Monday of the Letter of Map Amendment. “We’re getting there. I just know it’s on our checklist as a work in progress. There isn’t a specific opening date. In the next 30 days we’ll have a better idea” on an opening date.City Manager John Connet said the last projection he heard on an opening date was late August. Kim Reynolds, a Charlotte-based Publix spokeswoman, confirmed an opening in the third quarter, which would be by Oct. 1.“Ultimately they have to get (FEMA) to sign off” on the floodplain application, Connet said. “Plenty of people are speculating” that the fill on the site may have made flooding worse, he said. “The question I ask back is, Didn’t it flood this way before Publix was there? We have no indication it’s caused any increased flooding in that area.” More than 2 feet of rain in a three-week stretch in May caused widespread flooding across the region, including high water that closed Greenville Highway directly in front of the supermarket site.Since the May floods crews have completed a new concrete box culvert that drains water from the site via a channel called the Johnson ditch.The contractor has to get a driveway permit from the NCDOT. And still to come are a center turn lane for shoppers northbound on Greenville Highway. The NCDOT is requiring the left-turn lane into the driveway entrance at the southern end of the parking lot. Plans submitted by Halvorsen’s traffic engineers also show a 130-foot southbound right turn lane on Greenville Highway across from Copper Penny Street and a new right turn lane from White Street into the store parking lot.       Read Story »

Mills River News

Mills River OKs tax breaks for herbal supplement maker

MILLS RIVER — A Brevard-based distributor of herbal supplements is hoping to expand its footprint in Henderson County, consolidating leased spaces into a new $10 million facility at Broadpointe Industrial Park that will generate up to 30 jobs over three years.Gaia Herbs, a nationally recognized producer of herbal supplements, plans to move operations from Brevard and East Flat Rock into Broadpointe and continue operations at an existing facility in Mills River. It plans to invest $10.7 million in the building and $1.5 million in furnishings and equipment for a total of $12.2 million.The Mills River Town Council on Thursday agreed to $42,700 in economic development incentives over five years in the form of property tax rebates. The promised jobs would pay an average annual wage of $39,600 plus benefits. The company currently has 260 employees, including 30 in Henderson County.The herbal supplement maker cited the location next to the Asheville Regional Airport as a positive factor. The new facility would contain a bottling operation, warehousing and order fulfillment plus offices and support staff, said Brian Traylor, vice president of operations. The company's headquarters, manufacturing operations and farm will remain in Brevard. “It’s large enough we’re able to start with a facility that meets our needs for the near future and still gives us the opportunity to expand our footprint in that area,” Traylor told the council. It’s an advantage, too, to be across the road from the N.C. State University agriculture research station on Old Fanning Bridge Road.“It really lines up well with who we are what we already doing, considering we have a large farm ourself,” he said.The Henderson County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to take up a separate tax incentives request from Gaia Herbs and the Partnership for Economic Development next month.The company would break ground in August and complete the facility by the fall of 2019 if it closes on the sale, Traylor said.Marketing manager Aimee Sprinkel described the company as a “seed to shelf” enterprise that carefully cultivates all of its plants and harvests the plants when they’re ready, not when the business side needs to fill an order.“At Gaia we actually go out and see if the plants are ready,” she said. “We work with mother nature. We don’t force mother nature.”Councilman Richmond Meadows said he had followed the company for years in Transylvania County.“Ya’ll have grown from a little bitty something to a whole lot of something,” he said.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Trail length doubles at 'no excuses park'

FLAT ROCK — The Park at Flat Rock, said Mayor Bob Staton, is one more attraction that makes the village special.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Pardee board elects new officers, welcomes new members

The Pardee UNC Health Care Board of Directors elected new officers and welcomed three new board members during its last meeting of the fiscal year on Wednesday. Jack Summey was elected board chair, Greg Burnette vice chair, Hall Waddell treasurer and Tammy Albrecht secretary. Joining the 15-person board of directors were Vivian A. Bolanos, market manager for First Bank; Brian Cavagnini, senior director of operations for axles at Meritor; and James “Jimmy” Chandler, a retired vice president of operating services at Compaq Computers. Bolanos, Cavagnini and Chandler  fill seats left vacant by Peggy Judkins, Bill Moyer and Bill Smith, who have completed their terms. The new board members began their term on June 1 and will serve for three years through 2021. “On behalf of the Pardee UNC Health Care board of directors, I am pleased to welcome Vivian, Brian and Jimmy,” Summey said. “As leaders in their respective industries, we look forward to their unique perspectives as we pursue our mission to offer high-quality health care to our community .”   Read Story »

Etowah News

Residents spotting an elk that left Cataloochee herd

LAUREL PARK — Ibby and Bradley Jones are used to wildlife, living on Ransier Drive near the woods. But the big animal they saw this week was a startling sight.“I thought I was dreaming,” Bradley said. “Yesterday morning about 7:30, we were getting ready for work and it was outside by the driveway eating grass.”Jones made smart phone pictures and a video.“We just stayed inside,” he said. “We have two black labs and luckily they both stayed inside. He kind of noticed we were taping and looked up and he just kind of walked away into the woods. It was wild.”A technician working a job at Foxwood off Mountain Road spotted an elk — maybe the same elk — on Tuesday morning, said Keith White, a manager at Summey.“They went by and they said ‘Holy cow’ and took the picture,” he said.The wildlife experts are on it. In fact, they’ve been tracking the bull step by step ever since he left the Great Smoky Mountains herd about three weeks ago.“We don’t know why he came here but we know where he came from, his route and how he got there,” said Mike Carraway, a wildlife biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. “This is a young bull that’s probably about three years old. He was hanging around with a small herd of elk in the Maggie Valley area. He had been there a couple of years and all of a sudden he decided to cross the mountain from Maggie Valley to Waynesville, then went from Waynesville up around the Waynesville watershed toward Lake Logan, then went to where he’s been hanging out recently in Etowah.”Carraway had heard about the Laurel Park sighting. He says it’s the same bull.“It’s probably not as many as you would think,” he said of the mileage the bull had been wandering.Biologists don’t know for sure why a young bull might leave a herd but it’s not all that rare.“That is a strong possibility that maybe he was being bullied by other bulls,” he said. “We’ve had elk do this before, particularly young bulls. guess it’s a natural way for wildlife population to spread, is for these young animals to go out. We’ve seen this before. This time we had a collar on one and we’ve been tracking him the whole way.”More than 10 million elk once roamed North America but the last North Carolina elk was killed in the late 1700s, according to a website on the elk herd that was released in the Great Smokies in 2000 and 2001. The 52 North American elk released in the Cataloochee Valley have multiplied ever since.“He’s just wandering,” Carraway said of our new elk. “He doesn’t seem to be particularly afraid of people.” And that’s not necessarily good. “Even though he might seem tame, they’re wild animals. They should not approach him and not feed him. He’s tame enough as it is. Don’t try to feed him. Let him go where he wants to go.”In the long view, Carraway said, it’s not surprising that a few elk have spread. “We kind of expect this behavior,” he said. “Unless there's some kind of threat, I think people should expect to see more wild elk around these parts. We have female elk as well that are outside from the Great Smokies and it’s usually small herds with a mixture of females and young bulls and calves. When we start seeing females more widely dispersed that’s an indication that the population is spreading. But this one in particular is just a bull that’s wandering.”At three years old, the bull is not full grown. He might head back where he came from in pursuit of a mate in another year or two.“I would suspect that as he becomes an older and a more mature bull and gives serious thought to looking for cows, he might go back,” Carraway said. “If he gets near cows right now he’s going to have to contend with a larger bull.”   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Don't miss this week's Hendersonville Lightning (178)

You won't want to miss this week’s Hendersonville Lightning.   Read Story »

Henderson County News

Couple charged with Planet Fitness break-ins

The Hendersonville Police Department has charged a man and woman in connection with nine vehicle burglaries in mid-April at Planet Fitness and other businesses. Two suspects identified by the Sheriff’s Office Crime Suppression Unit were Dennis O’Neal Pack and Ashley Renee Watkins. Hendersonville police detectives conducted interviews with both individuals and were able to link them to vehicle burglaries at Planet Fitness, South Rock Grill and Blue Ridge Health and Rehab, the police said in a news release. Pack was charged with five counts of Breaking and Entering Motor Vehicle, five counts of Misdemeanor Larceny, five counts of Felony Aid & Abet Larceny and two counts of Misdemeanor Aid & Abet Larceny. Watkins was charged with three counts of Breaking and Entering Motor Vehicle, three counts of Felony Larceny, two counts of Misdemeanor Larceny, two counts of Misdemeanor Aid & Abet and one count of Misdemeanor Injury to Personal Property. Pack was jailed at the Henderson County Detention Center under $205,000 bond. Watkins, who turned herself in, was jailed under a $11,500 bond.   Read Story »

Laurel Park News

Senior apartments, round 2, off to rocky start

LAUREL PARK — Nine months year after the Hendersonville City Council shot down its request for senior apartments on U.S. 64, a developer is shopping the idea in Laurel Park.   Read Story »

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