News

THE TOP 10: No. 2 and No. 1

Council members were all smiles when Mayor Barbara Volk snipped the ribbon on the city's new parking deck in March.

By Bill Moss, Published: December 28, 2023

2. Happy Trail

Extending its long streak in the Lightning’s Top 10 news stories of the year, the Ecusta Trail achieved what many observers had doubted and what a handful of hard-core dreamers had hoped for 12 years ago. It went from concept to concrete, from fantasy to fact. “I’m still pinching myself that it’s actually going to happen,” Mark Tooley, chair of the friends at Ecusta Trail, said at a groundbreaking ceremony on Oct. 30 that attracted 500 trail supporters to a farm in Horse Shoe. “Fifteen years ago, a group of individuals from Henderson County — and you heard some of the names, Chris and Hunter and Joe and Ken — had a vision of this trail between Hendersonville and Brevard and the dream for this trail and the organization known as Friends of Ecusta Trail were born.” On Dec. 4 a contractor started construction on the first six miles of the 20-mile greenway that will pass through Laurel Park, Horse Shoe and Etowah. The trail seized momentum this year as supporters celebrated an unprecedented run of success in securing state and federal checks. The announcement of two awards worth $46 million last summer raised the overall total to $65 million in grants since 2020. “We have worked to seek support from state and local governments, nonprofits, non-governmental partners, businesses and local residents,” Tooley at the groundbreaking. “The outpouring of support has been overwhelming, and is the reason we are here today.” The future is promising, too, that more trail mileage is coming. A partnership of land conservancies is seeking grants and working on the early design phases for the 31.5-mile Saluda Grade Trail from Inman, South Carolina, to Zirconia.

1. Downtown parking

Many news stories are startling and unexpected. Others, like the Ecusta Trail and our top story, are years in the making. When city leaders snipped a ribbon to celebrate the city’s new parking deck on March 1, the occasion marked the opening of a facility elected officials, business leaders and shopkeepers had been talking about for a generation. Downtown parking earned the top spot for 2023 because no single change throughout the year affected as many people in a direct way — whether they were restaurateurs, store proprietors, employees, diners or shoppers. The parking deck gave rise to a return to paid parking downtown to generate the revenue to cover the deck’s $12 million cost. “We are so glad that this day is finally here,” Mayor Barbara Volk said at the ribbon-cutting. “People have been waiting for it as has the rest of the city council. We're tired of hearing about parking too.” Not so fast, your honor. There’s been plenty more chatter, whether it’s complaints about the cost and the user friendliness of the kiosks or suggestions by downtown stakeholders on ways to adjust the system. City council members say they’ll take a look at all of those once they have a full year of parking data this coming March. In the meantime, predictions that paid parking would turn downtown into Ghost Town turned out to be, like reports of Mark Twain’s death, “greatly exaggerated.”