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Hi All, I've been meaning to post for a while as I browse through here periodically. I have a couple of questions for the locals. I live in South Florida and am considering a move to Asheville. I have visited the area several times and have covered most of western NC in all my travels. It seems to me the general trend over the last several years is that people are moving either out of the cold, or out of the heat to areas that offers more seasonal changes. Considering western NC has everything from cold, hot, sun, snow, rain, clear skies, cloudy skies, pleasant scenery............. why is it population growth in the area has not increased when compared to some other areas? I would not be moving until I have a job lined up; I hear that the job market is a deterrent, but then again the job market is a deterrent throughout most of the country. Aside from the job market it would seem to me this area has much to offer so how come there is not such a large demand? I've read about what cities are (have been) growing rapidly and it seems to me they don't have nearly as much to offer as Asheville/western NC area. Is it because Asheville is such a small city and might not offer as much as a large city? Are there other factors? I will be coming from a large metropolitan area so I understand what some people may see as a benefit of being in a highly populated city. I look forward to any opinions you may have to offer.
Hi All, I've been meaning to post for a while as I browse through here periodically. I have a couple of questions for the locals. I live in South Florida and am considering a move to Asheville. I have visited the area several times and have covered most of western NC in all my travels. It seems to me the general trend over the last several years is that people are moving either out of the cold, or out of the heat to areas that offers more seasonal changes. Considering western NC has everything from cold, hot, sun, snow, rain, clear skies, cloudy skies, pleasant scenery............. why is it population growth in the area has not increased when compared to some other areas? I would not be moving until I have a job lined up; I hear that the job market is a deterrent, but then again the job market is a deterrent throughout most of the country. Aside from the job market it would seem to me this area has much to offer so how come there is not such a large demand? I've read about what cities are (have been) growing rapidly and it seems to me they don't have nearly as much to offer as Asheville/western NC area. Is it because Asheville is such a small city and might not offer as much as a large city? Are there other factors? I will be coming from a large metropolitan area so I understand what some people may see as a benefit of being in a highly populated city. I look forward to any opinions you may have to offer.
I absolutely love Asheville and lived there from 1993 to 1996. I go about 4 to 5 times a year to visit. The jobs and pay scale keep the population down. Plus the fact that it's mainely a tourist town so the cost of living isn't any lower than living in a larger city. Every person I know that lives and works there makes about 20% less than if they lived in Charlotte for example. For me it would be worth it, but the problem now is the fact that there are little to NO jobs at all there unless you are a bartender. The hotel industry is pretty big there also.
^ What that person said is true, BUT... Asheville IS overcrowded. The only time it is not crowded is from about mid-November through mid-April. We get our town to ourselves in the winter. Or well, the town I used to live in anyway. I feel much more like a Barnardsville resident than an Asheville resident now.
See, the problem with Asheville is that the powers that be recognized that Asheville was a great tourist destination, and so they (meaning the city council and whoever else) decided to focus a great deal of resources and energy on making it into an even more tourist-friendly destination. Now, we can't get industry here (although some new factory down Fletcher way just opened up some jobs I think), and all you can do to make a living is wait tables or bartend. And not only are those jobs kinda sucky, what with the late hours and having to deal with the general (drunken) public, they're also impossible to find. All we have is service industry jobs, but you can't even get one of those!
I don't mean to paint a bleak picture. This is such a beautiful place, and as I type this I am gazing at my beautiful view of mountains and pastures (the main pasture gets a lot of deer running through in the evening), I recognize why I'm here. However, threads like this also remind me why I don't plan to stay. See, I am one of the lucky ones I suppose; I came here to go to school, and I have managed to do fine money wise by working jobs and getting some support from parents due to my very high GPA. Once I'm graduated, though, I won't be in that boat anymore, and I'll need to provide for myself, and Asheville, despite its charms, is not a good place to do that.
Plus it's too damn hot here anyway. "I'm goin' North, the sun here burns my eyes; And I don't really care, we're all drownin' down here...". Or this one: "Last thing I need's a Mustang, last thing I need's a tan, I'm gonna get myself up North, find out who the hell I am...". Anyone know who that's by?
Maybe I should rephrase 'overcrowded' lol. Guess I didn't mean to imply densely populated, I was talking more about population growth. Sorry, living in South Florida the first thing that comes to mind when talking about population is crowded. What I noticed while visiting is the lack of urban sprawl, which is what lead to my question. I was very surprised to see such a lack of new home construction over the last decade when compared to other small cities.
Asheville really can't grow a ton more because of lack of land. A lot of WNC is National Park/Forest/State owned so the land that is for sale is costly. Additionally its very difficult to build on a mountain, not to mention expensive. Now that doesn't stop those who want to build mcmansions and make a huge profit, but it stops businesses from coming in and affordable (300k or under) houses from being built. Why spend 1mil to build an office in asheville when you can spend half as much somewhere else?
Hi All, I've been meaning to post for a while as I browse through here periodically. I have a couple of questions for the locals. I live in South Florida and am considering a move to Asheville. I have visited the area several times and have covered most of western NC in all my travels. It seems to me the general trend over the last several years is that people are moving either out of the cold, or out of the heat to areas that offers more seasonal changes. Considering western NC has everything from cold, hot, sun, snow, rain, clear skies, cloudy skies, pleasant scenery............. why is it population growth in the area has not increased when compared to some other areas? I would not be moving until I have a job lined up; I hear that the job market is a deterrent, but then again the job market is a deterrent throughout most of the country. Aside from the job market it would seem to me this area has much to offer so how come there is not such a large demand? I've read about what cities are (have been) growing rapidly and it seems to me they don't have nearly as much to offer as Asheville/western NC area. Is it because Asheville is such a small city and might not offer as much as a large city? Are there other factors? I will be coming from a large metropolitan area so I understand what some people may see as a benefit of being in a highly populated city. I look forward to any opinions you may have to offer.
I think it all comes down to a lack of good paying career jobs.
Most who come to Asheville do so to retire or to vacation, so jobs aren't an issue
I agree with the above posters that it mainly centers around the lack of good paying jobs in relation to the cost of housing. Typically you will find jobs in Asheville pay 20% less than elsewhere, but at the same time cost of housing per sq. foot is higher than anywhere else in the state.
Another thing is the illusion of the lack of urban sprawl. I call it an illusion because of the affect the local terrain has on how the cities and towns grow. There is always a mountain in between the housing area's....so a natural buffer to make the urban sprawl look less. It is there though.
ANOTHER reason why Asheville's population has stayed fairly stable over many, many years has to do with accessibility. Back in the 1970s and previous to that, the road that came from the East and up the steep mountains right by the Town of Black Mountain to arrive in the pleasant valley where Asheville is, it wasn't like the big six-laner I-40 we have now. It was one scary little road, no dividers, no lights, one and sometimes two lanes up, same way down. So, while Raleigh and Charlotte grew three- and four-fold in population over the last 50 years, Asheville's city limit population stayed in the same range of 60,000 to 70,000 since way back before mid-century times. It was just plain hard for folks to get up here, including of course trucks with building materials, and the snowy and icy winters REALLY made it tough to get here AND live here.
But when they built the current I-40 road to get up into these mountains, it was a huge relief for travelers, the corners were not on the edge of a cliff, eighteen-wheelers weren't coming straight at you really fast down a hill, and instead we've got a well-graded easy-curve and flat many-laned regular highway to get up here. As an result, the city limit population went up around ten thousand. BUT Asheville's population is also gauged by the county population, as well as the surrounding area population, and that is a rather large number, seems like I recall it's in the 200,000 range, so Asheville HAS grown plenty in the last 20+ years in that respect, too.
The only time I get annoyed at traffic is on some of the main drags that go in and out of our city, especially during rush hour and tourist/university season. While the downtown and all the varied neighborhoods are relatively "quiet," we are also plagued by hamburger alleys, altho efforts have been planned out and some carried out to make those boulevards a little more "user friendly." For example, there is a big hullabaloo about the Patton Avenue Bridge situation. That is where the Interstate that goes North and South crosses the East and West routes to and from Asheville via getting up on an already busy bridge. So, whenever that is straightened out, some of the traffic problems along there will be reduced. There has actually been continuous revisions to our highway traffic situation all over town, so hopefully at least the car congestion at many locations will perhaps remain at least tolerable.
So, as I said, accessibility to Asheville is ANOTHER reason, aside from the ones already mentioned like jobs, that the population growth seems APPARENTLY less than other cities in our state and elsewhere. But the notion that Asheville has not grown has to be tempered by the knowledge that the area as a whole, the greater Asheville region to include several busy but smaller towns, and many areas of homes built in scenic valleys and hillsides all around Asheville city proper, DO show growth that, while somewhat controlled, is more comparable in numbers of people to other large cities in North Carolina.
But I just HAVE to say something about the job situation. Asheville, like any other city, has your basic types of businesses and professionals working all day long doing the same things other cities do. Just as an example, I used to do some legal work, and thus early on before I made a career change, I wound up working with lawyers. There were PLENTY of jobs working with legal firms. So, likewise, all the sorts of jobs that keep a city going are actually here, and if you have a particular field of work you're interested in, be it teaching, health care (Trauma Two hospital), space design, florist work, town-like resorts that need newsletter writers, managers, personnel officiers, event planners, and so on, plus we have the usual local, county, state, and Federal jobs, and there's also policemen, firemen, and EMTs... well, I could go on and on.
But I'm just saying that "regular" white-collar and well-paying blue-collar jobs do exist here. If a person has already been in the workforce for a while and has established skills, college-educated or not, they can come to Asheville to live and eventually work. We are fortunate, an unemployed person can go down to the N.C. Employment Security Commission downtown, and can sit down with a jobs counselor who has the inside scoop and latest openings in industries and smaller companies and really every kind of employment there is, and they will make it one of their missions to find you work using any skills you have already developed well enough to switch from being a human resources person in Florida to a HR person in Asheville, NC, as an example. But coming right out of college or having only a couple years of experience in a particular field, with competition as strong here as anywhere, then sometimes you gotta wait tables to keep money in your pocket, until after sheer determination and persistence, plus maybe a little more night schooling at our tech school or university or some outlying colleges to improve on existing skills or learn new skills, eventually a decent living can be made in the mid-level and higher workforce jobs in our town. It's just that since the economy is still trying to recover from several huge financial disasters, not to mention two wars, the jobs I describe are fewer and farther between.
So, yes, jobs may keep anybody from moving ANYWHERE, except perhaps to very large cities like NYC. But it is also true that accessibility to Asheville not that long ago and for so very long was difficult, and thus that has also had an impact on population growth numbers for Asheville over decades as compared to other larger city population-increase figures. Hope that also helps answer the original inquiry. GG
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