The West End/Clingman neighborhood, once known as the Chicken Hill area (a somewhat racist reference to the black residents who mostly inhabitated the neighborhood back in its mill days), is slowly changing, though not at the speed of downtown.
You know the neighborhood. You can see it best traveling to Ashvegas from West Ashvegas, off on the left of the Smoky Park Bridge, a neighborhood on a hillside above Riverside Drive and the old mill buildings, including the remants of the mill buildings that burned in a spectacular fire about 10 years ago.
Some of the old houses there have been rehabbed. But not much has really happened. It seems frozen, as everyone awaits the day that a deep-pocketed investor plops down some serious change on a riverside development. RiverLink has been promising that it would happen. So far, though, it’s just a pipe dream.
There’s a ton of new housing being built just off Clingman, if you’re headed downhill from Patton Ave. The Grey Eagle brings some much-needed life to the corner there. I never thought it was such a good idea to move, but the Eagle has been doing well. The Silver Dollar cafe is an interesting landmark – I’ve never had the balls to actually eat there.
Down the street from the Eagle is a new sandwhich shop/catering house that has gotten some good buzz. Further still is another of Asheville’s historic landmarks left to rot, an old hotel that has been purchased by investors who promise to liven it up.
It’s going to take some doing. Graffitti marks the walls of some buildings along that strip. Plywood covers some broken windows. It’s so quiet that it feels as if a tumbleweed might blow through.
But the relentless redevelopment of Ashvegas will hit sooner, not later. Stand back.