The Woodward Avenue Action Association hopes to buy and renovate part of the complex in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park, which was designed by noted architect Albert Kahn.

It was home to the moving assembly line that revolutionized the auto industry, as well as the $5 average daily minimum wage credited with helping turn the working class into the middle class.

Heather Carmona, the association’s executive director, said Thursday that the plant’s significance in the nation’s 20th-century manufacturing might is more relevant today as the U.S. auto industry and the Detroit area work to remake themselves following years of struggles.

“That rebirth we can use and tie to the history of the building,” Carmona said.

Dearborn-based Ford sold the complex decades ago to a private company. The automaker still uses part of the facility, which housed military production in World War II, to store machinery and company records, said Bob Kreipke, Ford’s corporate historian. Other companies also use parts of the former plant.

“It was quite a unique building,” Kreipke said. “For a number of years, it was the largest inside manufacturing facility in the world.” He noted it also served as a model for Ford’s other assembly plants nationwide.

The association is working to raise about $800,000 to buy part of the site, and estimates the renovation could cost nearly $8 million. It hopes to reach an agreement soon that could lead to the purchase of the part including the plant’s former administration building, which would be converted into the visitors center. That building is in disrepair, with some windows boarded up and the ceilings falling in.

The association estimates the renovation could take five years, but Carmona said tours could start sooner. It plans to seek individual, group and corporate donors, as well as state and federal grants.

To help raise awareness, the association entered the plant into the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “This Place Matters” contest. Online voting through Sept. 15 offers the chance to win $25,000 for preservation efforts.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

Gore, USDA Community Programs Director Bill Hobbs, and Area Director Pam Hysong met and reviewed drawings of the project with County Commissioners Chairman Kirk Kirkpatrick, Vice-Chairman Bill Upton, County Manager David Cotton and Scott Donald and Maggie Carnevale from Padgett and Freeman Architects, PA. Members of the Boards of Directors for the Department of Social Services and Health Department, department directors and other county staff also attended.

Commissioners approved the loan obligation documents on Aug. 2. The $12.5 million loan will be used to purchase the 115,000 square foot building to house the Haywood County Department of Social Services, Health Department, and Central Permitting offices (which includes Building Inspections, Environmental Health, Planning and Erosion Control).

The USDA Community Facility Loan program, which is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), helps finance essential community facilities and services for public use in rural areas, such as schools, child care centers, hospitals, medical clinics, assisted living facilities, police, fire and rescue stations, community centers and public buildings.

USDA’s Rural Development’s mission is to increase economic opportunity and improve the quality of life for rural residents. The program administers and manages more than 40 housing, business and community infrastructure and facility programs as laid out by Congress. These programs are designed to improve the economic stability of rural communities, foster growth in home ownership, finance business development and support the creation of critical community and technology infrastructure.

The project is expected to go out for bid as soon as possible in September with construction beginning in November.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

These four men spent a week in Marshall, attending a meeting of the Marshall Alderman, and discussing local government, infrastructure and leadership with public officials and town leaders, including school superintendant Ron Wilcox and Emergency Management Services Director Gordon Randolph.

Why Marshall? The men were said they looking for a remote, mountainous area within driving distance of Fort Bragg, but not too close by – somewhere as much like rural, tribal Iraq or Afghanistan as possible.

“We’re basically keeping our skills sharp,” Meyer said.

The men don’t know where they’re preparing to go. They could be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, or they could go assist in a natural disaster like the earthquake in Haiti last year.

“Anything that pops up, we need to be ready for,” Meyer said.

It’s a little bit hard to explain what it is they do.

Schafer said they would be “providing a liaison between the civil population and the military commanders.”

“We interface with the civilians in an area where combat operations are going on,” Schafer said.

The News-Record & Sentinel asked the men if in Afghanistan or wherever they go, they might be setting up the infrastructure they are talking to people in Marshall about – schools, for example.

It’s not that. It’s more like they would be finding leaders to set up the schools.

They identify a community’s needs, according to Schafer, and then they find leaders already existing in the community who can fill in those needs.

If this sounds all a little vague, it could be because these men haven’t yet put the theory into practice.

“We’re a new concept in the army,” Schafer said.

They’ve just been thrown together and are still “jelling up as a team,” according to Meyer.

The News-Record & Sentinel met with the Fort Bragg men while they were having coffee at Zuma’s with Marshall First Baptist Church pastor Steve Loftis and Mayor Lawrence Ponder.

Loftis was giving the men a bit of an explanation about economic development efforts in the town of Marshall and some leadership advice.

“It’s a slow process,” Loftis said, citing by example how the men may find themselves coming into a community wanting to make a lot of changes. Sometimes many minor changes are more effective than a big change, according to Loftis, who compared managing change in a congregation to moving pegs on a board attached to rubber bands.

Loftis talked about ways the French Broad Fridays events like the Drover’s Road event were designed to honor the town’s past, to cope with a perception that the events were being run by “a bunch of hippies” from outside the region.

And Loftis discussed the way community leadership is not always governmental, whether in congregations or in small towns.

“You end up with elected leaders, and you end up with people in charge,” Loftis said, explaining that sometimes someone in the back of a room can have as much influence on decisions as the people in power.

Source: News-Record & Sentinel

Rob Goggins, vice president of franchise development for Great Clips, Inc., announced the Grand Opening of the company’s newest hair salon franchise business in the Rutledge Commons Shopping Center in Arden, NC.

“Our manager-run hair salon business is conveniently located on Airport road of I-26 between Asheville and Hendersonville in North Carolina,” said Goggins. “This high-traffic retail shopping area is anchored by Wal-Mart, Target and Lowe’s, and of course, our Great Clips franchise salon. The demographics of the area are well suited for our value-priced, no appointment necessary service.

“Our franchise owners open to a $55-billion hair-care industry. With more than $700 million in total system-wide sales, Great Clips is the world’s largest hair salon brand and our hair salon business plan is recession resistant. We just recorded our 23nd consecutive quarter of same-store-sales growth.”

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

Trash Inc. was opened this month in Biltmore Village by four people seeking to divert usable materials from the landfill for use in art, craft, do-it-yourself and educational projects. Inside its Thompson Street location, one can find everything from Plexiglas to 5-gallon buckets to trophies, cigar boxes and an old upright piano now in pieces.

“In our first week of operation, we have 6,000 pounds of diverted usable materials on the shelves for sale,” said Sharon Cobb, one of Trash Inc.’s founders.

Trash Inc. is run by Cobb, Leslie Goodrich, Neal Sorenson, Anne Ferguson and several volunteers. Cobb and Ferguson are graduates of Mountain BizWorks and were introduced through active participation as members. Trash Inc. continues to use Mountain BizWorks’ resources in building partnerships and support.

“In the near future, we will begin to add art openings for children as well as adults, workshops, classes, birthday parties and educational outreach,” Cobb said. “Long-term growth plans include large-scale production and sale of goods from diverted materials, allowing us to provide fair-wage jobs and make a more significant environmental impact.”

Trash Inc. gets its goods through a combination of scavenging and donations. There’s a “wall of fame” behind the cash register that recognizes area businesses that have either made a large one-time donation or are set up to make smaller donations over time.

There’s also a gallery devoted to art and clothing, which must be made from at least 75 percent reused materials. Pieces for sale include children’s clothing made from upcycled adult T-shirts and shrine art made from car hubcaps.

Cobb has wanted to start a business like Trash Inc. for several years.

“I’ve been talking about it for about six years, and my friends were tired of hearing about it and said, ‘Please go do something about it,’” Cobb said. “I started having little feedback forums with friends and family to see if they thought it was feasible.”

Ferguson was starting a separate business focusing on art classes using reusable materials before she met Cobb.

“I’ve always been into recycling and reusing to some extent,” Ferguson said. “I have a 5-year-old son, and it’s become much more important to me as a parent to teach him to be less of a consumer and to use the things that are already out there.”

Cobb said she has been into recycling and reusing her entire life, following the example of her parents. “We’re all consumers, but we can make do with less, and it’s about teaching that we can,” she said. “That’s going to be part of our mission — to let people know that you don’t have to but the next new thing just because it’s advertised.”

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

In addition to a more convenient location, the bank’s new building provides the convenience of a drive-thru window, an ATM, ample parking and easy access.

The bank’s telephone numbers have not changed.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

The recession has imposed a new frugality on Americans, who are spending and borrowing less, and saving more. People who were once moving to the mountains in droves are now staying in place. That means the mountain economy that built up around those new residents must adjust.

“It does appear that we’ve hit a plateau. Our economy has depended on growing jobs in the government, medical and construction industry for second-home owners, and that has dropped off significantly,” said Mack Pearsall, a local businessman who helped establish a local economic development think tank, the Asheville Hub Alliance.

“I think we’re trying to figure out how to take all the wonderful assets we have here in Western North Carolina and provide a good living for people,” Pearsall said.

Success lies in a diversified regional economy that

encourages entrepreneurs, high-tech manufacturing and green jobs, according to economic development officials.

Staying in place

In a presentation last month about the region’s economic outlook, Tom Tveidt, a local research economist with Syneva Economics, a private consulting firm that specializes in regional economic analysis, said there is “significant structural change” in the migration patterns of people moving to Western North Carolina.

U.S. Census figures show the number of people moving into Buncombe County has dropped about 60 percent since 2006, Tveidt said, down from about 4,500 movers that year to just more than 2,100 last year. Many of those coming to the region were of the Baby Boomer generation.

“We sort of took it for granted that all those people would show up,” Tveidt said. “But there’s been a switch here, and most demographers don’t think there will be a return to in-migration of Baby Boomers.”

Census data released this spring showed that migration in the U.S. is sharply down from July 2008 to July 2009, with many Americans stuck in place because of the lack of jobs and depressed housing prices. Former hot spot destinations in California, Florida and Nevada saw big declines.

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Aeroflow Healthcare will provide heavy hors d’oeuvres for business associates and invited guests. There will also be door prizes and the Chamber of Commerce will be on hand for a ribbon cutting. Festivities are set to begin at 4 p.m. at the new corporate office.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

AdvantageWest will also place nine interns in 12-month, full-time positions with qualified regional green energy-related businesses. An additional three 12-month fellowship positions will focus on building capacity among local governments in the areas of energy planning and management.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times

A new Hardee’s is being built beside the old Hardee’s. Construction began in July and the new building is expected to open mid-October. Once open, the old building will be torn down, making way for more parking. During construction, Hardee’s dining room and drive-through are still open.

Mountain Diner has opened where Huddle House used to be – 66 New Clyde Hwy.

Canelo’s Mexican restaurant has opened in the old Pizza Hut location – at the Canton Plaza Shopping Center. Call 648-0303 or visit http://www.canelosfamilyrestaurant.com/.

Source: Asheville Citizen Times