Since both Mike and Frank used lists for their columns, I decided to follow their style. I know that growth and land development are of significant interest to most mountain residents, so I thought I would outline four trends to keep your eye out for in the coming months. I feel as though the Cherokee blood in my veins (1/16) allows me to lay my ear to the proverbial ground of our region and sense these coming changes.
1. High buildings and residents. Many cities and towns that are experiencing sustained growth are feeling the pressure to extend upward. Residents and planners alike are often talking about constructing tall buildings in places where three stories had once seemed immense. I predict that once these places start building up (literally), the drugs will come. I’ve seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know that bad things happen in hotel rooms and offices 12 floors into the sky. My opinion is to keep the buildings short so that the local Joe can see in the windows, but I figure that the sky is no longer the limit for buildings and parties.
2. Lawsuits over Development Names. It’s only a matter of time until someone names a brand new development Glen or Ridge something, and someone a county over sues the new development for stealing its trademarked name. Pretty soon the mountains are going to run out of vague, romantic development names and people are going to start repeating used ones. I call Craggy Butte.
3. Fill dirt mini-storage facilities. Fill dirt makes money. Apparently so do mini-storage units. It won’t take long for local entrepreneurs to realize that these two ventures go hand in hand. A storage unit full of fill dirt will not only help start shoring up the ground around a new mountain estate, it will also serve as an extra attic once the dirt is securely under the house.
4. Charter buses. I’ve kept this idea to myself for a long time, but I’ll never have the time (or money) for it, so I’ll go ahead and let it out. Plus I think it’s only a matter of time before someone else starts this business. Quite a bit of Western North Carolina is made of “half-backers”—people who spend half of the year in Florida and the other half here. In the next year or so, charter buses will start running the route from WNC to Florida when the weather changes. In October, buses will leave the area, and in March, they’ll bring folks back North. The buses will be high-dollar, top-of-the-line vehicles, with bathrooms (that alone will save seniors 3 hours travel time), TVs with closed captioning, bingo boards, and a shuffleboard court in the back. The travelers won’t have much need for luggage since they will have stored most of their belongings in the local fill dirt storage facility.
I’m not a prophet, but I pay attention to the winds and trends.
Rick Yelton
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