From Humble Beginnings
Downtown After 5 is now known as this lively, thriving event that happens the third Friday of every month. It’s easily distinguished from the other Fridays of the month by the swarms of people that flock to Lexington Avenue, shutting down S. Lexington to street traffic and opening up completely to vendors and music. Looking at it now, you can see how it spawned out of someone’s smart idea to roll out a keg and have a band play in order to draw people to the downtown area after the downtown area had been devastated by the suburban sprawl. It’s quite remarkable to see just how large the event has become and just how many people come out for it every month. Asheville Downtown Association board president, Adrian Vassallo, said that there were close to 6,000 people that came to the last Downtown After 5 and his main focus is to make sure that those numbers continue to go up.
I can guarantee you that a portion of the Downtown After 5 crowd doesn’t visit downtown on a regular basis and definitely doesn’t walk the Lexington corridor, or the Broadway corridor, or the Haywood corridor. When you come to Downtown After 5 now you can’t park there, you have to park somewhere else and you have to walk to the event. That’s part of the magic is that those attendees are walking by businesses they wouldn’t walk by otherwise. That’s why during that night both before and after you walk downtown and it’s packed full of people - because guess what, they’re exploring. They’ve gone to the event, they’ve had a beer or two, they’ve heard some good music, and now they want to go out to dinner, they want to go shopping, they want to see something else and they’re going to see something new. We left downtown after five Friday night and we were walking by Local Taco and saw that they were getting ready to be open - we’re not the only people having that experience. We ended up going to eat at creperie in the courtyard, they had an awesome band, we were there till midnight. That’s the kind of experience we want attendees to have Downtown After 5. Not just coming and enjoying the great event that we’re doing, but exploring downtown and become aware of what you don’t know is going on down here.
How long have you been involved in this event?
I’ve been involved for the last eight years. Some of the early people that were involved with the Downtown Association are Bob Carr, your neighbor at Tops for Shoes. He was one of the originators of the Downtown Association, he sent a letter to fellow businesses on behalf of the Asheville Revitalization commission. Back then it was the Downtown Revitalization Commission that had been initiated to look at what could be done to make downtown better. They knew that part of what needed to happen was that they needed an independent body to be an advocate for the changes that needed to occur. So Bob had a meeting at what was Stone Soup, which is now Mellow Mushroom. Invited everyone in, I’ve got a copy of the letter, actually. That’s what started it back in 1987 and then a year later they decided that one of the things they could do is have special events which gets back to Downtown After 5 and with those special events we’ll pull people in.
Tell me a little bit about the evolution you have seen with this event and the Downtown Association:
When I first moved here almost ten years ago, the Downtown Association was basically doing two events, Downtown After 5, at that point, was traditionally held on pack square. As it evolved over 20 years, it grew into a much bigger event and pack square became its home. the other event that they were doing was Nouveau Night which was when Nouveau Beaujolais wine is released in November. It was a wine and cheese night it was held in the Haywood Park Hotel. They were also doing the advocacy work, because you got to realize the events are only half of what we do, but it’s the most visible thing we do. Most people don’t realize what goes on behind the scenes. Last night I was at city council advocating for downtown investment in the city budget for this coming fiscal year. I was one voice and we need to have more voices join that to make it relevant and for the city council to hear that. They see some of the concerns in downtown, but don’t realize that there are a lot of people who are impacted by our downtown’s vibrancy.
Vassallo is also interested in the vast amount of developmental potential for the downtown area that is being overlooked. He says that the downtown area, in terms of city planning, is a lot larger than people think and largely underdeveloped.
Building community, economic development is really what is driving a lot of my passion with the ADA because I feel like we have so much more opportunity in the downtown, we’ve got such a fun thriving, eclectic community and we can have more of it. I look around at some of our greatest success stories in downtown in the last decade and some of these are businesses that never would have been around 10-25 years ago.
Vassallo feels the endless potential for Asheville to grow...
Towards the south slope and over by the tunnel road bridge, there is raw land there that could be developed for specific uses and if we focus on encouraging those developments, we’ll grow tax base in those areas, we’ll grow downtown residents, we’ll grow downtown workers and that’s what we want. When you have businesses centered in a downtown core, and residents centered in the downtown core, your community gains efficiencies with city services because they don’t have to drive. Everyone is in a tight area so walkability becomes viable, everyone can walk to work. Everything that you want in a downtown community can happen in our downtown.
Vassallo comments on the new places popping up around town and how important they are, he explains, “Having a great vibrant downtown spawns other things and attracts new things.” That’s why it is so important to spread the word about new places and also to go and see them for yourself. He says:
We’ve got a lot of great trends happening right now and we need to support them and embrace them, but we also need to realize that the city, as far as city government, needs to have an investment in that as far as infrastructure. You go down the south slope and the sidewalks are a mess. There are things that the city can do to direct pedestrian traffic towards the south slope. We can change the infrastructure to become more welcoming.
But what can be done to make sure that Asheville maintains it’s original feel as it grows?
Many people that sit on the Downtown Commission are from the Asheville Downtown Association. One of the responsibilities of the downtown commission is design review, so if you’re a developer and you’re going to locate any new project, whether it’s a new building or renovations you have to go through the design review process with the Downtown Commission and from an aesthetic perspective there’s definitely some things that the design review subcommittee tries to impose on developers. Your project needs to fit the Asheville landscape. During that process we also coach them on how their project could really fit into downtown. It’s important to also note that there are no ordinances to prohibit chains from coming in. Chains will come to Asheville. Chains that want to be in Asheville are going to have to embrace Asheville and not asheville embrace them.
What’s your main focus right now?
Right now we’re looking at some really basic city services that need to be added to the downtown core. We know the influx of not just citizens and daily workers, but tourists that come through and you can’t have a downtown that’s dirty and unsafe. You got to focus on fundamentals of cleanliness and safety. One of the comments I made last night was that we need to have recycling downtown, not just residential and commercial recycling, but recycling for the pedestrian. People that are walking around that have grabbed a drink or something and they’re walking through downtown and they don’t have anywhere to put that and we don’t have enough trash cans and that’s why we have a litter issue. People are not going to carry around their trash with them, they are either going to find the most convenient spot or they are going to drop it. That’s a sad fact.
The other litter issue that the city faces is cigarette butts, Vassallo tells me that it only takes three cigarette butts to kill and trout and everytime it rains all the cigarette butts that have been dropped in the downtown area are being washed into the waterways. He is hoping for new bins or a smoking oasis to be installed downtown so that smokers will have more options. Vassallo feels that as long as we grow tobacco there will always be smokers so we need to have an environmental accommodation so that we’re not impacting our wildlife.
Sign up for Downtown Asheville’s Clean Up Day Here: http://www.ashevilledowntown.org/node/2153
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