News

In shadow of idle job site, neighbors hope Cedars can be rescued

City officials and neighbors of the idle Cedars project on North Church Street at U.S. 64 said they’ve heard nothing new about its status. Residents and office workers who see the structure every day hope to see the development restart.

By AMY B. MCCRAW, Associate Editor, Published: July 25, 2026

The removal last spring of the crane that towered over the Cedars Lodge & Spa construction site served as an emphatic signal for neighbors of the stalled development on North Church Street at U.S. 64.

The Rev. Andres Gutierrez, the minister at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Hendersonville, remembers watching from his office window when the project across the street got underway in 2024.

The scene was so intriguing, he said, that parishioners brought their families to watch the work.

“We had people bring picnic blankets out here to watch the crane work,” Gutierrez said.

Then months ago, he noticed progress at the construction site seemed to stop.

When the crane came down in March, the rumor mill around the church cranked up. Some parishioners said they thought the project was poorly planned while others expressed sympathy for Fran and Tom Shipman, the Cedars owners whom they had always known as good neighbors.

The Shipman family formed a partnership with Gregg Covin, a Miami businessman who is married to the Shipmans’ daughter Shelley, to turn the site of the historic inn into an upscale condominium development.

The land and buildings bounded by North Church Street, U.S. 64 and Buncombe Street were bought by Hendersonville businessman Clifton Shipman in the late 1970s and passed on to his heirs. Fran and Tom Shipman were well-known around town, running a successful catering business and operating the Cedars and Chariot as event venues.

After work stopped and Turner Construction Co., the general contractor, pulled out, the project’s main lender sued to force the property into receivership. A North Carolina Business Court judge agreed, entering an order on June 30 that empowers the receiver, Liberty Solution LLC, to market, list and sell the property. Fuse 10 LLC, the Fort Lauderdale-based commercial finance company that loaned the Cedars developers $32 million in 2023, retains the authority to OK any sale.

An exhibit in the Fuse lawsuit lists the corporation’s owners as Tom Shipman, Clifton’s widow, Delores Shipman, and his daughter Barbara Shipman Huntley, each with a 10 percent stake, and LBM Enterprises LLC and Covin, with 35 percent apiece.

Gutierrez, the Immaculate Conception priest, says the uncertainty and rumors surrounding the Cedars must be difficult for both the family and people who invested in the project that remains in limbo.

“You just feel for those impacted,” he said. “Now, those dreams are on hold.”

But he also sees the pause at the site as an opportunity for the community to reconsider what it wants at the Cedars. The location could transform into a space for much needed affordable housing, he said.

“It would be awesome to have a facility where that impacts the community in a positive way, for those underserved,” Gutierrez said. “Help people who need help.”

Conversion to affordable housing would obviously not be the preference of the lenders and creditors, which besides Fuse include a group of investors using the EB5 Immigrant Investor Visa program and Turner Construction, which has filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit seeking $6,988,473. In a motion their attorney filed in the receivership case, EB5 investors said the Cedars corporation owes them $8.9 million plus $1.6 million in interest for construction loans they made.

A lawyer representing an electrical contractor that’s filed a mechanic’s lien seeking $968,700 said after the receivership order was filed that there’s a good chance a successor developer could step in.

“It’s an attractive property and there likely will be folks interested in buying it,” Gene F. Rash, a construction law specialist, told the Lightning. “There are still active developers. I’ve got clients that are still obtaining financing and building new multifamily projects. I think there will be interest.”

‘I’m not going to say anything bad about it’

In the fall, Roy McKinney watches Hendersonville High School football games from his front porch on Bearcat Boulevard. As preseason practice got underway across the street on a recent summer day, McKinney stood on his home’s back porch. The unfinished, six-story development looms over his flower garden and patio furniture.

He said he too began hearing rumors about the Cedars months ago when worked stopped at the site.

“They took down the crane, and I knowed it was all over then,” he said.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the future of the development near his home, McKinney said he knows the Shipman family, wishes them well and hopes work will soon begin again at the site.

“I still think they are good neighbors. I just hate this happened,” he said. “I’m not going to say something bad about it.”

Randall Dufner worked near McKinney’s home recently weeding-whacking a garden on Buncombe Street for the nearby St. Gerard House, which provides support to individuals with autism and their families.

From where he stood among the raised beds of flowers and vegetables, Dufner could also see the unfinished Cedars standing over the area.

“Last year, work just stopped,” he said.

When he talked to construction workers on the site, they told him they were having a hard time getting paid.

“I talked to a guy. He said they stopped getting money. They eventually stopped working without pay,” Dufner said.

‘Now we have this gray monstrosity’

At Allstate Insurance Co. across Church Street from what the Cedars developer calls the Pisgah tower, Stephen L. Giardina said he misses the Autobell carwash, which was removed to make way for the development. Giardina gives customers directions to his office by referring to the big unfinished structure in the middle of town.

“The carwash was very busy all the time,” he said. “Now, we have this gray monstrosity. I don’t want it to be our new landmark, but that is what it seems like.”

Giardina said he realized something was off at the Cedars months ago when he stopped seeing construction workers walking to work at the site. He also noticed the contractor pitching unopened boxes into dumpsters on the site.

He’d like to see the development finished before the property deteriorates and starts to look even worse than it does now.

When his customers ask what is happening, Giardina said he quotes a Lightning article published in March when the crane came down reporting that the developers were seeking new financing.

Covin said three weeks ago that’s still the case.

“Because this is an active case we cannot give detailed statements to the press other than to say we are actively working on a financing solution to restart the project,” he said in an email response to the Lightning’s query.

Social media riled up

Hendersonville City Manager John Connet said he knows little more about what is happening with the Cedars than what he reads in the newspaper.

Connet has received no updates and had no conversations with developers about the project. But he acknowledges reading plenty about the idle project on social media.

“The conversation around town is, ‘What is going to happen to it? Is it going to finish? Is another developer going to take over?’” he said.

Mayor pro tem Jennifer Hensley also said she has nothing to add from her position as a city council member.

“I have heard zero updates from the Cedars,” she said. “I don’t have information at all. I would like to know as much as anybody else. … We see stuff on social media all the time — that it’s an eyesore, and I don’t disagree. I know people are frustrated and upset.”

She said she hopes the project will get back on its feet eventually.

Hensley and Connet also said that the city had little control over what happened at the Cedars other than to allow for the site’s rezoning.

“In North Carolina, people have the right to develop property,” Connet said. “We don’t regulate financing or how they get their financing.”

The city also has no plans at this point to pursue a possible public/private partnership that might involve a convention center at the Cedars, they said.

“We tossed out a lot of ideas of the community needing a convention center,” Connet said. “It never went anywhere.”

A partnership with the current developer, he said, is not something city staff would recommend.