Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:

Question: The Broadmoor Golf Course near the airport suffered catastrophic damage during the floods of Helene. Only the driving range has been able to operate. But now there is great activity that looks like the course is being rebuilt. I think the property belongs to the airport, and it is contracted out for management. Who is paying for this work, and when might the course be ready again for play? 

My answer: I do miss playing this course, mainly because it’s not often I get a chance to hit a wayward shot onto an interstate, in this case I-26. Usually my drives are confined to the woods or a simple two-lane road. 

Real answer: In short, a lot is going on at Broadmoor, which is located off Airport Road about a mile from Asheville Regional. The airport does own the property, but it leases the golf course to a company, DreamCatcher Hotels, which operates the golf course and plans to build a hotel on the property.

Zeke Cooper, president and CEO of DreamCatcher, told me his company has a 50-year lease, and it is committed to site improvements.

“As always planned, we are developing a hotel on the property, which we plan to start site work on later this year,” Cooper said via email.

Helene, which struck our area Sept. 27, inundated the golf course and clubhouse. The French Broad River is close by, and the property is, as the name implies, relatively flat.

“The golf course lost over 1,000 trees and had 12-18 inches of silt covering 60-70 percent of the course,” Cooper said. “The first step was to remove all of the tree debris and remove the silt.”

The company finished that in April, and golf course reconstruction started shortly thereafter.

“The clubhouse had two feet of water on the first floor, with the basement completely submerged,” Cooper said. “The maintenance and irrigation buildings were submerged, resulting in total losses of the buildings and all equipment within them. It was a mess!”

Fortunately, they did have flood insurance. Cooper said total damage exceeded $10 million.

“So a lot of the work is being paid for with insurance funds, as well as our own money,” Cooper said. “We do not have an opening date yet, but expect to reopen in spring of 2026.”

For the golfers out there, Cooper gave a detailed breakdown of all the work they’re doing:

On the golf course: Stripping all greens surfaces, adding in new greens mix and reseeding with bent grass. All greens are completed and currently growing in. The 11th green was completely destroyed, as well as some tee boxes. Those have been rebuilt and are growing in.

All of the fairways and tees have been stripped of silt, regraded and tilled. All of these areas are currently growing in with Bermuda grass.

All of the bunkers were stripped, regraded and rebuilt with new drainage and sand. Sod was used around every greens complex and all bunkers, with the work completed about a month ago.

The irrigation electrical system was destroyed, and has now been replaced. New irrigation pumps have been operational the last couple of months. Workers also had to clean out and replace drainage systems, along with lots of bank restabilization.

Driving range: “We were able to open the driving range in a temporary capacity while work was being undertaken on the course,” Cooper said. “We closed the range on Aug. 11, in order to fix damage from the flood.  It is currently under construction and we hope to reopen it in the next three to four months. No timetable, yet, as it’s weather dependent this late in the season.”

Clubhouse, maintenance buildings: The company gutted, cleaned and rebuilt the clubhouse. “We are close to hopefully reopening the clubhouse and restaurant in the next two months,” Cooper said. “We are working on finalizing some construction items for a full Certificate of Occupancy, as well as waiting on furniture, fixtures and equipment.”

The maintenance and irrigation buildings are completed and in use, Cooper added.

Question: What is going on with the FernLeaf Community Charter School in Fletcher? I’ve seen they’re putting back in mobile classrooms in the area that flooded, and it looks like it’s close to reopening. I thought they moved all the students to their location further south that sits on top of a hill?

My answer: I suspect all of the new mobile classrooms are actually barges. Pretty ingenious, really.

Real answer: Back in April I wrote about FernLleaf, the flooding at its location off Howard Gap Road in Fletcher, and the school’s plans to rebuild. Helene’s floodwaters filled the buildings with up to six feet of water and swept some of them off their foundations, Nicole Rule, communications, marketing and events coordinator for the school, said then.

On Monday she had some happy news about FernLeaf’s “second act.”

“On Aug. 13, FernLeaf Community Charter School in Fletcher reopened its Creek Campus — 321 days after Hurricane Helene’s catastrophic flooding swept our main buildings off their foundations and left the campus under several feet of water,” Rule said via email. “In that time, over 430 elementary students and their teachers relocated to our Wilderness Campus (previously home to middle and high schoolers), where they continued learning without missing a beat.”

Rule said, “Community partners, including general contractor Beverly Grant and even the Carolina Panthers Charities (with a $20,000 grant), rallied to help us rebuild.

“While one building is still under construction due to this summer’s unrelenting rain, the reopening marks a milestone for our students, families, and the broader Fletcher/Asheville community,” Rule said. That building should be ready by the end of September.

Michael Luplow, FernLeaf’s executive director, said the school’s “journey has been a powerful demonstration of what we can achieve when we come together.”

“We are immensely grateful for the unwavering support of our students, families, staff, and the broader community,” Luplow said in the press release. “The re-opening of the Creek Campus is not just about a new set of buildings; it is a celebration of our collective spirit and our enduring mission to provide an innovative, inspiring education to our students.”

By the way, FernLeaf did rebuild on the same footprint, which is close to Cane Creek. But this is all approved.

“Since Fern Leaf had previously been constructed in a manner that met our current elevation requirements, they are permitted to go back in at the same elevation,” Town of Fletcher Planning Director Eric Rufa told me in April. “I have encouraged them to go higher, but current circumstances with regard to grade and ADA requirements may hinder that.”

The school did have flood insurance.

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s 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/

Related

(The Center Square) – Erin, once a Category 5 hurricane over the weekend that more than doubled wind speed to nearly 160 mph, on Monday morning remained on a path to miss landfall of the United States though not without forcing evacuations in North Carolina.

At 8 a.m., the Category 4 hurricane was just east of the southeastern Bahamas, the National Weather Center said, about 115 miles north-northeast of the Grand Turk Islands, and about 890 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras. Erin was moving northwest at 13 mph, forecast to be going north by Wednesday morning while parallel to the Florida panhandle.

Erin had 75 mph maximum winds Friday at 11 a.m., a Category 1, and 24 hours later was near 160 mph and Category 5. It has since gone to a Category 3 before gaining more intensity.

On the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, Category 1 is 74-95 mph, Category 2 is 96-110, Category 3 is major and 111-129 mph, Category 4 is 130-156 mph, and Category 5 is greater than 157 mph. While the most-often characterization of Atlantic basin cyclones, the scale is without context on storm surge – a key factor in damage at landfall.

Dare County on Sunday declared an emergency with evacuations ordered for Hatteras Island and the Outer Banks. N.C. 12, the famed 148-mile roadway linking peninsulas and islands of the Outer Banks, is likely to go under water and parts could wash away – as often happens with hurricanes.

NC12 begins at U.S. 70 at the community of Sea Level and runs to a point just north of Corolla and south of the Currituck Banks North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve. Two ferries, Hatteras Island to Ocracoke Island and Cedar Island to Ocracoke Island, are part of the route.

Nearly all of North Carolina’s 301-mile coastline is within the outer wind field projection from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center. The greatest speed, however, is 20 mph.

Erin’s rapid intensity is among the greatest on record, and particularly so for prior to Sept. 1. Hurricane force winds (74 mph) extend 60 miles from its center.

By midnight Thursday into Friday, the storm is expected to be past a point parallel to the Virginia-North Carolina border and gaining speed away from the coast.

The storm’s miss of the state is particularly welcome in light of Hurricane Helene. Recovery from that storm is in its 47th week. Helene killed 107 in the state, 236 across seven states in the South, and caused an estimated $60 billion in damage to North Carolina.