While downtown Asheville emerged largely unscathed from Tropical Storm Helene, its lack of potable water for nearly two months and a dramatic dropoff in foot traffic have led more than three dozen businesses, some that had been there for decades, to close.

The normally crowded leaf season and Christmas holidays were painfully slow. Visitation to downtown, a walkable area packed with art galleries, restaurants and shops, has declined this year – by one estimate it was down 21 percent year-to-year for a recent 30-day period.

Hayden Plemmons, executive director of the Asheville Downtown Association, said her organization has been tracking brick-and-mortar business closures by word of mouth and being on the ground.

“We’ve noted about 40 closures in the district, with 15 being restaurants,” Plemmons said. 

In 2023, Asheville attracted 13.9 million visitors, according to the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, a record that it might have eclipsed last year if not for Helene, which hit right before fall foliage season.

At its May meeting, the TDA provided statistics showing tourism has yet to rebound. For April, demand for hotels was down seven percent from last year; hotel occupancy, at 64 percent, was down five points from 2024 and 10 points from 2019. 

In a June 6 email, Plemmons said that over the preceding 30 days, downtown had about 465,000 visitors, which is down about 21 percent year over year. 

It’s not time to panic, business leaders say

But she and others involved in the downtown area say they are not in panic mode.

“As far as retail goes, we are seeing in many places that when folks leave the retail store, the space is leased pretty quickly after and folks are moving in,” Plemmons said, noting that some of those have been relocations from the River Arts District or Biltmore Village. “It takes a long time to lease and turn over a restaurant. It takes a lot more financial capital to make that happen, so I do think that’ll be a little bit slower to rebound.”

Kit Cramer, president and CEO of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, said myriad factors and decisions go into closing a business, especially after a natural disaster. People are making the best decisions they can right now, navigating their financial situations, where they are in the life cycle of a business and what they’ve been through personally.

Asked if she’s worried about the 40 downtown closings, Cramer said, “I am and I’m not, because I think the only way out is through,” adding that the area does need a “really robust” summer tourism season.

With several of the restaurants that announced recent closures, including Bouchon and The Laughing Seed, the owners noted that they have been in business for decades and are at retirement age. 

Joan and Joe Eckert started a vegetarian lunch counter at the downtown YMCA in 1991, which morphed into The Laughing Seed and became an institution on Wall Street.

“It’s been a rough five years since COVID and they have really taken their toll in terms of costs, staffing, downtown issues, and our drive to keep going,” they said in their closure announcement. “We hoped we could come back from Helene in a positive way, but have decided it’s more than we can manage as summer approaches. Times have changed, we’ve changed, Asheville has changed, and the reality is that we need to bow out and head toward our next adventure.”

Their hope, they wrote, “is that another wonderful restaurant will move into the space that we’ve called home for so many years and keep the magic alive at 40 Wall St.”

‘We want to focus on the rebirth and regrowth’

A few hundred steps from Laughing Seed, Heather and Paddy Collins just held the grand opening for their new venture, Asheville Forager, a grocery store/deli that serves fresh sandwiches and products from 37 local vendors.

The place, which is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week, was packed on opening day with curious shoppers and supporters, but Heather Collins took a break to explain why they took a chance on downtown.

The building was damaged after Helene because a faucet was left on, resulting in flooding once water service was restored. The previous tenant, Asheville Emporium, had another location on Biltmore Avenue, so when it vacated the Wall Street spot, the Collinses hopped on it. Despite the recent sluggishness downtown, Heather Collins said she’s not concerned about their business model.

“I’m good because we’re not gearing our business on tourism,” Collins said. “We are focusing on locals. We want to help the people that have lost things,” referring to many of their vendors who sustained losses during Helene.

“So we want to focus on the rebirth and regrowth of Asheville,” Collins said. “It’s our home. It’s where our kids go to school.”

A couple of blocks away at 60 Haywood St., Sharon Ryback is banking on tourists returning. She and her husband, Eric, have launched a nonprofit, The Museum of Costume Jewelry, which will showcase “hundreds of pieces of jewelry and fashion accessories from fashion icons including Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Miriam Haskell, Christian Dior, and more,” according to their brochure.

They’re aiming for a late summer opening in the former Bloomin’ Art floral and gift shop, which closed in 2023 after four decades. The Rybacks had planned to open the museum in St. Louis, where they lived, but that was right when COVID hit in 2020, so they put those plans aside.

The couple had been visiting Asheville twice a year for 10 years, as their son is a coach for Asheville Youth Rowing.

“My son said, ‘If you can’t do it here, you can’t do it anywhere,’ referring to the close to 14 million tourists a year that visit Asheville,” Sharon Ryback said.

The couple moved to Asheville, but they needed to wait out COVID, which had tanked the economy, especially tourism. Sharon Ryback worked as an adjunct nursing professor at a local nursing school. Her husband operated the Saint Louis Street Clock Co., which restored the landmark Spicer Greene Jewelers street clock three years ago.

But they were committed to the museum idea, come hell or, quite literally, high water. They made an offer on 60 Haywood St. four days before Helene struck. Property records show the building sold for $1,060,000.

Sharon Ryback said they’re aware that Asheville has struggled to reopen after Helene, and then to bring tourism back to a full roar. But they’re confident it will.

“I really think that because the tourism is so robust, a museum such as this has a great chance of being successful,” Ryback said. “It’s really all about the tourism.”

She expanded that a bit, though.

“But it’s also going to be interesting for people who live around here, and for artists to come and see the designs of this jewelry, and the jewelers and school groups,” she said. “So I think it’s tourism, and local people will really benefit from it.”

Work crews were busy this week on the space, which the Rybacks gutted. Outside on a Tuesday afternoon, sidewalk traffic was sparse.

That doesn’t surprise Plemmons with the Downtown Association.

“What I’m seeing is that the trend is that there’s spikes on Saturdays,” Plemmons said. “So the weekends are feeling back to normal, but during the week, it’s not so much.”

Bouchon founder and owner Michel Baudouin recently told Asheville Watchdog that downtown needs locals’ support.

“We cannot just depend on the tourism,” Baudouin said. “Tourism is the icing on the cake, but I think that it’s okay for the locals to go downtown and support downtown.”

Other prominent restaurants or bars that closed include Bold Rock cidery, the downstairs of Barley’s Taproom (the owners hope to reopen it in the coming months), and the Citizen Vinyl cafe (although the record pressing business remains in operation). On the retail side, closures included Mountain Made gallery and Printville, a copy store geared toward businesses, both formerly in the Grove Arcade.

Melinda Knies of Mountain Made posted on social media that a family situation and her husband’s medical issues, coupled with the downturn from Helene, made closing their only option. 

“My husband Charlie’s medical condition made it clear that we needed to relocate to Tennessee for better treatment options and to be closer to family,” Knies wrote. “And hurricane Hell-ene destroyed our business sales for the three most significant months of the year. All together, these events have led me to the heartbreaking decision to close Mountain Made.”

Plemmons stressed that some businesses on the closure list have shifted models, and some spaces have already been filled. For example, the Fox & Beaux custom made jewelry store closed its brick and mortar spot because of Helene but relocated to its office and showroom upstairs, where the business offers private shopping by appointment.

“It’s changing,” Plemmons said. “A lot of stuff is constantly changing.”

How many businesses are downtown?

The total number of businesses in downtown Asheville is hard to determine, as is the geography of the area, to a lesser extent.

Plemmons did not have a specific total of businesses, although the Downtown Association is working to nail that down, especially in the wake of the implementation this year of the Business Improvement District. That downtown initiative involves routine cleanups, safety enhancements and “ambassadors” to ensure safety and cleanliness.

The Asheville Police Department does not track the total number of businesses downtown, and the Fire Department says its statistics include dwellings, warehouses and all other structures. The Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce did not have a number, either.

TDA spokesperson Ashley Greenstein said the authority had pulled a “report of our partners” and found that about 400 tourism-related businesses are currently open downtown. Greenstein noted that this does not include all downtown businesses, “but rather visitor-facing businesses with brick-and-mortar establishments that are part of our partner network.”

Greenstein said about 85 percent of Asheville’s hospitality and tourism businesses are open, and that includes hotels, restaurants, breweries, galleries, shops, music venues, and outfitters.

“Since Hurricane Helene, Explore Asheville has onboarded a total of 95 new partner businesses, with 83 of those established between January and June 12,” Greenstein said.

The TDA’s most recent report on travel and hospitality partners in Buncombe County found that 1,231 businesses (83.4 percent) are open, 106 (7.18 percent)) are temporarily closed and 74 (5.01 percent) are permanently closed. Another 58 (3.9 percent) are listed as “call for status.”

As far as the geographic borders of downtown, that has varied over time. The city and the Downtown Association include all of the South Slope entertainment area in the downtown, which the city refers to as the Central Business District. The eastern border is the Beaucatcher Cut, while I-240 provides the borders to the north and west. Some consider the South Slope, traditionally a commercial and warehouse center before morphing into an entertainment hotspot, a separate area from downtown.

‘There’s no simple answer’

Cramer, the Chamber of Commerce CEO, brought up another factor that may be putting a crimp in area visitation: the perception that Asheville got wiped out in Helene. While downtown was largely unscathed and remains in much better shape than hard-hit areas, it still fights a perception among potential visitors regionally and nationally who’ve seen endless clips of the flooding and devastation in the region and assume everything was damaged and remains closed.

While other tourism hotspots in the city such as the River Arts District and Biltmore Village were badly flooded and remain largely closed, the downtown area was back up and running relatively quickly. The River Arts District and Biltmore Village remain largely closed, although the upper RAD is open and businesses are starting to reemerge in the village.

“I think we’re going to have to, in part, prove that we’re back by the experiences that people have, and at the same time, work on helping those that are still in really rough shape,” Cramer said. “We’re just going to have to persevere through this. And I think there’s no simple answer to the situation except perseverance and getting the kind of support we need at the state and federal levels.”

Michigan residents Mark and Laurie Moreno, who were celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary with a multi-city road trip that included Asheville, strolled North Lexington on a recent late Tuesday afternoon. They had been in town for only a few hours, but they seemed happy with the downtown’s feel. They also noted that they hadn’t seen any closed stores.

“All we’ve done are these two streets, but I love the vibe,” Laurie Moreno said. “Very walkable.”

Mark Moreno said he’d been here before on a work trip and enjoyed the art galleries and restaurants. They both had heard about Helene and knew the River Arts District sustained about 80 percent damage, but they still felt Asheville was worth a visit.

“It was impressive enough that I thought, ‘Yeah, I can come back here,’” Mark Moreno said.

Beth Stickle, who operated the Bloomin’ Art gift shop and floral operation for 40 years before closing it in 2023, still comes downtown frequently. She’s seen the empty spaces and some restaurants that aren’t open every night like they used to be.

“Everybody is short-staffed,” Stickle said, adding that can leave a bad taste in visitors’ mouths.

“People need to understand they’re doing the best they can right now with what they’ve got,” Stickle said. “You can’t lose housing and lose staffing, and think that things when they open back up are going to be normal. It’s going to take a while. It’s not going to happen overnight.” 

She stressed that she’s not worried that it won’t happen at all. Downtown is just at a transition point, she said.

“I think that we are experiencing a shift that was precipitated by a couple of events that nobody could have possibly thought would happen — first COVID and then this storm,” Stickle said. “This shift was going to happen — probably a lot more gradually — but it was going to happen because many of us were aging out, and also it’s just time. It’s time for young people to be involved in some growth and some new ideas.”

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.

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