As Pat Whalen likes to tell it, there were more pigeons than people in downtown Asheville 20-25 years ago.
Today, it’s hard to imagine that places like the Grove Arcade, Malaprop’s Bookstore, The Laughing Seed Café and the Haywood Park Inn were boarded-up buildings.
Whalen, who runs the development company Public Interest Projects, says the right combination of entrepreneurs and opportunities came together in the late ’80s and early ’90s to create a downtown revival that has been celebrated by urban planners and municipal governments across the country.
Whalen is frequently invited to give PowerPoint presentations to business and development groups about the revitalization of Asheville. The slide that particularly grabs people’s attention is the one from the Census Bureau showing that downtown grew by 65 percent between 1990 and 2000. Most cities our size grew by just 9 percent that decade.
Last week, the Citizen-Times ran an excellent series by reporter Mark Barrett that chronicled not only the revitalization of the ’90s, but also the ups and downs of Asheville’s economy since the 1920s.
Full Story Here: Citizen-Times.com
