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N.C. 107 footprint expands Updated plans absorb additional business locations BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER uly 15 was a busy Thursday night at Bogart’s Restaurant in Sylva. The dining room was full of people and conversation, the kitchen hopping. Then came the fire. The grease on the grill ignited, the flames climbing into the hood system. It looked like a big chimney fire, said owner Tim Hall. A volunteer fireman who happened to be dining there saw it and jumped into action, evacuating the occupants. The fire department arrived within two minutes, and while they extinguished the fire, the extensive smoke and water damage left behind meant that Hall would have to rebuild from the studs if he wanted to use the building again. Two weeks later, Hall got some more bad news. A longtime customer who is also an employee with the N.C. Department of Transportation, told him that the DOT’s plans for N.C. 107 had changed again. Now, the project would destroy Hall’s entire building. “I’ve never been through anything like this as an owner,” said Hall, clutching the door of one of the sea containers now peppering the parking lot to shield himself from a stiff wind. “I’ve been in business since 1984. And this pandemic, the fire and then the state (road project) is sort of the trifecta. I just couldn’t bounce back from it.” Bogart’s is one of about nine businesses that recently found out that the N.C. 107 remake would boot them from their buildings. While earlier versions of the plan would have eaten away much of the parking at Bogart’s and at the three buildings skirting the intersection with U.S. 23, also known as Asheville Highway, the buildings were going to stay. But the most recent version of the plans calls for taking the structures too. For Hall, 62, that made the decision simple — though certainly no less painful. There
A BLOW FOR NEW BUSINESSES
Bogart’s Restaurant owner Tim Hall decided to close the Sylva institution after learning — shortly after a grease fire damaged the building — that newly revised N.C. 107 plans would take down the structure. Holly Kays photo was no reason to rehabilitate the smoke-damaged building if the DOT was just going to tear it down. “Having to tell people that, it hurts,” he said. “The worst thing was telling my employees in a meeting. That was the hardest thing.”
NEW PLANS RELEASED The latest changes to the road plan came in September, when the DOT completed its 75% plans for the long-debated road project. While potential remedies for traffic congestion and frequent fender benders on the road have been debated for decades, in 2017 the DOT released an initial concept and concrete path forward for the road project. The remake will extend from West Main Street at the fire department all the way out past Ingles, plus a one-third mile section of the Old Asheville Highway from McDonald’s to the N.C. 107 intersection. The DOT plans to build a five-lane road with a grassy median to replace the existing “suicide lane,” along with
bike lanes and improved sidewalks. Those improvements will require widening the road, which will require purchasing property — and a lot of it. Though the DOT doesn’t have an official number, the road project is expected to require more than 50 businesses to close or relocate. The DOT expanded that number to include Bogart’s and nearby buildings on the Asheville Highway when further analysis showed the existing road plan would take at least 90% of the properties’ value due to extreme encroachment on parking. “If you can’t get to the business, can’t get to the structure, you’re going to damage it significantly. The business cannot remain viable,” said Senior Project Engineer Jeannette White. “Looking at that, it just makes sense to say, ‘Let’s go ahead and pay full cost of acquiring those structures.” Doing so will allow the DOT to consider additional roadway features to improve traffic movement on the corridor. DOT staff came to the conclusion that acquiring those
For other entrepreneurs on the strip, the news came at a much different time in the life of their business. “It’s posed some concerns for us, because we’re afraid to move to any of the other locations that have a high traffic visibility area, because they are eventually going to get moved,” said Angela Zoran of Imperial Security and Wiring. “Even if they’re told, ‘We’re only taking your parking lot,’ apparently that is not in stone.” Zoran and her husband Mark moved into the gray Asheville Highway strip mall owned by Kole Clapsaddle in April, spending more than $30,000 to renovate the space and set it up as a showroom for their home automation business. They’d operated the business out of their house for years, but finally decided to pull the trigger on a public storefront, hoping to gain more visibility in town. Just a couple months later, they learned that their new location was slated for destruction, and that because they’d been in the space for less than two years, they’d receive fewer benefits than if they been there longer. Now, Zoran is not sure they’ll even stay in Sylva. There are only so many business locations in town, and the ones with the highest traffic visibility are the ones most vulnerable to the road project. Alicia Buckley of The Sylva Love Nest is in a similar situation. She and her husband David opened the store in June. The couple also own The Pied Piper, which is located in another one of Clapsaddle’s properties. When the Asheville
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Smoky Mountain News
November 3-9, 2021
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properties would be the best solution just a couple weeks before the fire at Bogart’s, said White. The agency made sure to let Hall know about those discussions before he pulled the trigger on renovations to the damaged building. A review of the plans also caught an error in which road designers failed to look at peak volume traffic when designing the right turn lane for Dunkin’ Donuts. That meant that, as written, the plans would not alleviate backups into the main lanes during those peak times. Now, the plans include free-flow lanes that encroach on the existing Dunkin’ Donuts building. The business plans to relocate on the same parcel to accommodate the project, White said.
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