Open Letter to Asheville City Council

Dear Asheville City Councilors,

We write in support of the conditional zoning requested for new apartment construction at 115 Fairview Road. We also write in support of the use of the city’s Land Use Incentive Grant (LUIG) for the project. Both the conditional zoning and the grant are on the agenda for the December 12th council meeting.

Asheville faces a severe housing shortage, which in turn is driving up rents and home prices across the spectrum of lower- to middle-class residents. Any and all multi-family housing that we can add to our city will go some ways towards relieving this scarcity.

Furthermore, aspects of the proposed apartments for 115 Fairview Road are noteworthy.

First, these apartments are more centrally located than most of those that have been before the council in recent years. It is imperative that we build more housing in and adjacent to the close-in neighborhoods where jobs and amenities already exist and demand is highest. To be certain, the short-sighted rejection and intentional delays of more housing in some such neighborhoods in the recent past have created something like a “chilling effect” among builders, pushing the new housing that we need away from the high opportunity locations, and unnecessarily increasing commute times and vehicle-miles-traveled.

This is an opportunity for the council to confirm that, as in accordance with the city’s 2018 future land use map, we want Biltmore Village and its immediate surroundings to become a welcome home to more people, and in turn, a more vibrant and socio-economically diverse area in which to live and visit.

The proposed apartments are a short walk from Biltmore Village, a short bike ride to the library and park, and a short bus ride to employers such as Mission Hospital and those downtown. Additionally, the plans for these apartments feature residences oriented toward Fairview Road, potentially making the environment feel more walkable and human-scale, and this is a welcome change from the homes that we sometimes see built off of the wide thoroughfares on the margins of the city.

Finally, we want to make one suggestion for a change.

Currently, the plans appear to call for a gate blocking the development’s east side from Westview Ave. Asheville’s 2018 comprehensive plan calls repeatedly for more street “connectivity,” and more grid or grid-like street patterns where possible. While this small change certainly wouldn’t create a comprehensive urban grid, we believe that simply removing the proposed gate would make for a more resilient and distributed traffic pattern, and provide more route options and opportunities to residents that may want to drive, bike, and walk in multiple directions from where they live.