News

THE TOP 10 NEWSSTORIES OF 2017: 3, 2, 1.

Rendering shows a new $53 million HHS.

By Lightning Reports, Published: December 25, 2017

3. The battle for Big Red

A Lightning Top 10 story for a third consecutive year, the battle over Hendersonville High School — build new or fix the old — came to an end after a tumultuous and emotional two-year drama. The story included threats from county commissioners or state Rep. Chuck McGrady to either abandon the project entirely, move the high school out of the city or de-annex the HHS property to void the city’s zoning power. County commissioners favored a new HHS building on the old Boyd car dealership property. After the School Board endorsed the option for a new HHS building in a 4-2 vote in December 2016, the next stop was the Hendersonville City Council, which had the authority to rezone the property. “If they vote no on the plan as presented, that will kill the project,” Commissioner Lapsley said. “It will be shelved indefinitely and there will be no new school.” Defying the threat, the city Planning Board in a 5-3 vote in April recommended that the City Council reject the plans. “I have a hard time going along with it with all the consternation that has been drummed up about it,” Planning Board member Steve Johnson said. Nonetheless, the council voted for the rezoning and Ninth Avenue closing needed for the project in a 3-2 vote on May 5. Final design of the $52 million school is under way.

2. Manhunt, murder and mourning

A manhunt that drew hundreds of law officers, emergency workers and volunteers to the Pisgah National Forest on a busy Saturday in July ended five days later after a chase through two counties and the arrest of Phillip Michael Stroupe II. A convicted felon who had just gotten out of prison for armed robbery, Stroupe, 39, was charged with abducting and shooting to death Thomas “Tommy” Bryson, 68, of Mills River. Bryson left his home at 8:35 a.m. Wednesday, July 26, four days after Stroupe vanished into the woods in the national forest. Authorities think Stroupe kidnapped Bryson when he stopped to check the mail at the end of the driveway, shot him and dumped his body in a cornfield. District Attorney Greg Newman announced that the state would seek death penalty for Stroupe in a trial set for July 23 in Henderson County. He faces charges of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and multiple other felonies arising from his desperate flight across two states. The violent death of Tommy Bryson brought an outpouring of community support and grief for his family. Friends, family members and strangers organized an impromptu candlelight vigil that lit up miles of N.C. 280. Mourners packed First Baptist Church and stood for more than two hours in a receiving line that stretch for more than a block down Fifth Avenue West. Friends and family have raised money for a basketball court at Mills River Town Park, a memorial to Tommy Bryson that recognizes his love of the game and serves the youth of the community he loved and that loved him back.

1. Growing pains

Even before the new year dawned, the die was cast on a theme that would dominate politics and civic engagement of 2017. In December 2016, when the Board of Commissioners unanimously shot down a rezoning application to permit 225 cottages Residents question an NCDOT engineer about Highland Lake Road widening.at Horse Shoe Farm, the power of the citizen uprising came into focus. From Horse Shoe to Etowah to Laurel Park to Flat Rock, homeowners rose up to oppose high-density housing as incompatible with the county’s rural nature and overtaxing on roads and other infrastructure. Yet when transportation planners proposed wider roads as a solution for the county’s robust growth, homeowners said no to that, too. Rick Merrill, a Historic Flat Rock trustee and past president, told the Flat Rock Village Council that the new Highland Lake Road would be overbuilt. “Thirty-four feet of roadway, four feet of shoulder, six feet of grass shoulder. Forty-four feet from ditch to ditch —10 feet wider than Greenville highway,” he said. “That’s overkill folks.” As Top 10 story Nos. 4, 5 and 10 suggest, the power of the not in my backyard movement is affecting how we travel in cars, on foot and on bicycles and raising questions about whether asphalt for motor vehicles and stop signs and traffic lights — not roundabouts, bike lanes or sidewalks — are the only fixes the community will accept. “Are we going to let public outcry kill things that in every respect make sense?” Joe Sanders, an advocate for greenways, said in an interview. As the year closed, county commissioners, town boards and homeowners were awaiting revised NCDOT plans for Kanuga Road, Highland Lake Road and U.S. 64 in Laurel Park and the county Planning Board was looking at revising the county land-use standards for high-density development in rural residential areas.