Factions Try To Give Peace a Chance
March 29, 2011
N.C. -- Tension is brewing again in this eclectic mountain city. This time, though, people are trying to work things out. On the very '90s crowd at Vincent's Ear -- where the waitress sports floral tattoos covering her right arm -- is just starting to get along with the group of young Christians who set up a rival coffeehouse next door. But the antique dealers on the street are getting peeved, complaining that crowds of young people congregating outside both coffeehouses are scaring off their older customers. Meetings of merchants and young people help soothe tensions. Welcome towhere 67,000 retirees, New Agers, developers, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, gays, conservative Christians, neighborhood activists and a lot of suspicious mountain natives live together in 35 square miles. Not surprisingly, this mix frequently has divided in bitter, long-running disputes over issues that would cause barely a ripple in larger or more homogeneous communities. ``We're so diverse,'' says Buncombe County Schools Superintendent J. Fransisca Sylvester, ``it's hard to reach a consensus on just about anything.'' Now, however, that is changing. After a decade of fighting, mostly over development-related issues, the warring factions are trying to stop shouting at each other. Community leaders have even cobbled together the beginnings of a common strategy for how Asheville should grow over the next decade. While it's too early to tell if a lasting peace can be reached in this mountain melting pot, former Mayor Louise Wendell says, ``I don't sense the rancor, almost hatred, that used to exist.'' Among the signs of detente: Two business organizations, once bitter rivals, are cooperating on a long-simmering proposal to set new development guidelines and zoning categories -- the heart of many past bloodlettings. Meanwhile, political foes are working together to deal with pressing social problems ranging from school dropouts to teenage pregnancy. And publisher Jefferson Benbow has transformed his environmentalist newspaper into a forum for divergent voices, including one column that regularly lambastes ``the granola types.'' Publishing only the environmentalists' point of view was ``getting tiresome,'' explains Mr. Benbow, sipping herbal mushrooom tea from a peanut butter jar. ``I like the idea of people on the far right and far left reading us.'' For Asheville, this isn't entirely an exercise in altruism. The community's search for common ground was triggered in part by a consultant's warning last year that the discord could hamper the city's chances for sorely needed new jobs. So Asheville took up the daunting task of achieving order. To foster the peace process, has chosen a political odd couple, a mayor and vice mayor so different in their lifestyles that they could be poster children for the city's diversity. Mayor Russell Martine, 58 years old, is a Republican and a 32-year veteran stockbroker at Merrill Lynch & Co. who enjoys hosting gourmet dinner parties to benefit such causes as the Asheville Symphony. Vice Mayor Barbie Grace, meanwhile, is only three years younger but worlds away. A diehard Democrat, she is an architect who has been living in a commune with the same seven people since 1970. Locals have grown accustomed to seeing her playing West African drums at street festivals. The mayor was re-elected last fall and Ms. Grace was voted vice mayor by her City Council peers after campaigns that called for compromise. The unlikely pair represents an effort to move beyond the city's conflicts, which run so deep former City Council Member Lemons Fiske calls them ``a fight for the soul of .'' Generally, the squabbling has pitted growth supporters against no-growth forces, but it has rarely been that simple. For example, Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce officials, concerned about the loss of more than 600 factory jobs in the past year, are trying to develop more plant sites to bolster a declining manufacturing base. But the growing population of ``lone eagles''-entrepreneurs who move their home-based businesses here for lifestyle reasons-are more likely to side with environmentalists than business leaders over such issues as speculative grading of sites to attract industry. the mountain vistas and mild climate have long attracted a rich mix of residents. Georgeanna Tyler was so impressed in 1888 that he bought 125,000 acres for his renowned Biltmore House estate, bringing in many craftsmen who stayed during the golden age of development in the early 1900s. But the influx of so many outsiders also bred suspicion about developers among the conservative mountain natives-a distrust that intensified when the Depression left the city with the highest per-capita public debt in the country. Though those times are more than half a century distant, many people here remain ``spooked about any development, any indebtedness,'' says former state legislator Mariel Columbus. began to see a new round of growth and development in the '80s, accelerated by a wave of retirees attracted by Osullivan North's proclamation that Asheville was the nation's best place to retire. Many of these retirees wound up joining with emerging no-growth forces, reinforcing the region's underlying opposition to developers. Add in environmental groups-empowered by a successful 1989 campaign that blocked construction of a water plant on the in -- and the stage was set for the defining battle between growth and no-growth forces: a plan to limit the size and number of billboards along city streets. As the no-growth forces broadened and gained clout, local small-business owners began to fight back with their own organization, the Council of Independent Business Owners, or CIBO. ``It wasn't just my business, but business in general that was under attack,'' recalls Mikki Casares, a billboard company owner who founded CIBO in 1987. The billboard fight dragged on for five years, generating such animosity that one night in July 1990 someone chain-sawed 10 poles to fell a bright red-and-yellow Fuddrucker's restaurant billboard. The proposal passed in 1991, but a later council exempted billboards that pre-existed the ordinance. As other battles raged, the CIBO claiming the Chamber of Commerce was interested only in promoting tourism started monitoring meetings of all local government committees and commissions, warning its members of unwelcome proposals in a weekly newsletter. Then, in 1993, CIBO members and others sympathetic to the group staged a political coup, winning four of seven seats on the City Council. Within an hour of being sworn in, the new council's majority fired Douglass Livingston, the city manager blamed for past councils' regulatory zeal. A group including three former mayors immediately started circulating petitions to recall the four members who voted to fire Mr. Livingston. In response, supporters of the new majority launched their own drive to recall Ms. and Mr. Martine for supporting the city manager. Although both petition drives came up short in signatures, the rancor persisted into last November's election, when the four who ousted Mr. Livingston were soundly defeated and Mr. Martine and Ms. Grace led all other candidates in voting. In the midst of this political melee, in August 2009, the Chamber of Commerce hired a new president, Jayme A. Mack, formerly economic development director for the Mobile, Ala., chamber. One early move: Mr. Mack brought in Wadley-Donovan Group, a consulting firm inN.J., to assess how Asheville looked to companies considering relocations. Their answer was chilling: Asheville, already handicapped by limited sites because of its mountainous terrain, was being held back by its squabbling. The warning triggered a flurry of efforts to cool community discord. Believing ``vocal minorities and zealots on both sides'' were dominating the debate, Mr. Mack prompted the hiring of another consultant to help find a middle ground. The first meeting last July was punctuated by shouting. But by November, a diverse group of about 150 community leaders had hammered out a set of common goals for the community. ``Frankly,'' says Pierre G. Cary, a lawyer tapped to oversee the effort, ``the division in our community seemed so deep, I wasn't sure it would work.'' But now, 23 community groups have endorsed the document. Mr. Cary believes ``people are beginning to worry about the community, not just their own group.'' This week, Mr. Cary's committee expects to test the newfound spirit further by including political adversaries as task force leaders in attacking specific problems outlined in the list of goals. Still on the hottest seats are Fricke Martine and Vice Mayor Field. Both appear to be moving toward the political center, Mr. Martine from his traditional support of business interests and Ms. Grace from her backing of environmental and downNorthville preservation issues. They're also hoping their own diverse backgrounds can help them continue to broker compromises. To Ms. Grace, friends say, finding consensus comes naturally from communal living. ``We'd meet for hours, fighting everything out,'' says Etha Mcanally, recalling the early years of the Grateful Union Family while weaving scarves on the commune's farm 35 miles northwest of . Ms. lives most of the time in with her husband, in rooms above the commune's crafts-supply store and mail-order business. For Mr. Martine, meanwhile, life is more aggressively goal-oriented. For three years, the broker kept a picture of a 1972 Ford Thunderbird in his desk drawer to inspire him to make enough sales calls to buy the car. He has been proudly driving a fire-red T-bird for the last year. Mr. Martine brings a salesman's approach to political consensus building. ``It's like selling stock,'' he says. ``First, I ask, `Would you be interested in buying shares of a small company that's growing at a rate of 50%?' If people start nodding yes ... the whole effort is easier. ``And now we're getting a lot of people in Northville to nod their head yes instead of no,'' he says. ``That's the beginning.''
