Asheville NC One of the best investments in the country

By Damien Hoffman Aug 13, 2010

Earlier this year, President Obama and the First Family used their rare vacation time to visit Asheville, NC. If you’ve never been, it’s one of the treasures of the US.

I recently sat down with with Jack Cecil who is a descendent of the Vanderbilt family (which owns the famous Biltmore Estate) and CEO of the prominent Asheville real estate development company Biltmore Farms. In this interview, Jack discusses his lifelong insights into why Asheville is one of the best real estate investments in the country.

Jack Cecil: I think the special features of Asheville are – one, its geographic location. It’s centered in the heart of the Southern Appalachians at 2,200 feet above sea level, but you’re not really isolated in the mountains as people may think because you can drive to Charlotte in two hours and to Atlanta in three hours.

The second special feature is bio-diversity. Western North Carolina is a wonderfully beautiful bio-diverse, temperate climate where there is no greater diversity of plants or flora and fauna found anywhere in North America. That’s why we have many of the same plants that are similar here to the ones you find in China. That’s an intriguing proposition when you think through botanical medicines and traditional Chinese medicines.

Basically you can grow 80% of all the plants that inhabit all of North America here in Western North Carolina. But in the heart of all of this you have a small town that acts like a large town: Asheville.

Asheville first became known as a trading town on the way to the West or a stop before the Cherokee nation. The railroads came through here which eventually brought people to Asheville back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Those people were initially drawn to the physical beauty and to the climate.

Asheville had a big real estate boom in the ’20s like many other cities. Then it basically went bust. But to Asheville’s credit, they retired all the millions of dollars of bonds that they floated in the ’20s. That helped preserve Asheville’s downtown as a wonderful collection of architecture. There’s some traditional Georgian architecture that you see at the Battery Park Hotel, then quite a bit of art deco like at the S&W Cafeteria and the Grove Arcade. These treasures survived because you didn’t have a big wave of development in urban renewal projects which destroyed the heart of many cities in the ’60s and the ’70s.
So, all that’s been preserved has now allowed Asheville to emerge as a small city with a large city feel. I’ve lived in San Francisco, Boston, and traveled quite a bit. And Asheville has a lot of similar attributes because it has a population of artists and innovative people. You also have people who are drawn by the medicinal properties of Asheville — be it the complementary and alternative healers or medicine practitioners. And all that is juxtaposed to a robust allopathic medical community.

Asheville is also a traditional southern town complete with golf course communities and traditional neighborhoods. We had a wave of the industrial/textile/furniture manufacturing that came in the late 19th and early 20th century, but that is now being replaced with medicine, tourism, and small startup entrepreneurial companies.

So, Asheville is a wonderful collection of anything you may find in a large city. Meaning, when I lived in San Francisco I had all the choices of good restaurants, theater, music, arts and crafts, and different lifestyles. I had young companies as well as old manufacturing companies of the landed aristocracy. But it was all in a very larger footprint of a million people in San Francisco and millions more people in the entire Bay Area. But we have the same amazing resources in Asheville — a town of 70,000 and a county of 200,000. It makes a great place to live.

Damien: Jack, as more people continue to come from some of the major markets for the reasons that you mentioned, what sort of things can those people expect in the next three to five years of Asheville’s development?

Jack: Well, if we do all of this properly, Asheville will continue to grow for all the reasons I just stated. With good planning and strategic thinking, we can maintain the charm of Asheville even by absorbing the projected growth.

We also need to create a community of choice. There are a few main areas which support the vision:

First, we need to think through the educational components that make Asheville currently attractive, but also how can we improve upon the existing educational institutions — be it charter schools, traditional private schools, public schools, religious schools, universities and community colleges.

The second important area is healthcare. People are obviously attracted by the quality of the medicine and the low costs we enjoy. But we also have a depth and breadth of the services. You can attend nursing school at AB Tech, have open heart surgery at Mission Hospital, and be treated with Chinese acupuncture by the only accredited school in NC. All in Asheville within five miles of each other.

The third component is economic development and job creation. We’re successfully making that transition from the manufacturing days to healthcare, tourism and young entrepreneurial startup companies. That’s why we have installed four redundant fiber rings and two electric sub-stations serving Biltmore Park and why small inexpensive offices downtown are important to the small start up companies.

The fourth important element of Asheville is the abundance of cultural activities. We need to keep the funkiness of downtown and the artistic components of handmade crafts, performing arts, dance, theater, symphony and more.

Finally, the fifth tenant of community development — and one on which Asheville prides itself — is the preservation of the environment. We need to enhance the quality of life experiences and improve Asheville for future generations. From the real estate planning perspective, we need to increase the density of Asheville.

That means taking advantage of the existing infrastructure and adapting to multiple uses close by each other rather than the old ways of zoning where you’d have a residential component distanced from the retail shopping centers, offices, and recreation. We need to bring those various uses together in the towns or clusters of development where you could literally walk to all these places — eventually reducing people’s dependence upon the automobile. That will ultimately improve our standard of living and quality of life while simultaneously reducing stress on the environment and infrastructure of Western North Carolina.

So, if we can do all those five things really well, we will continue to have a wonderful town in 5 to 10 years.

Damien: What can you tell me about some of the properties Biltmore Farms offers to those interested in Asheville?

Jack: People come to Asheville and our hope is they would become engaged in a businesses here, start a new businesses, or become a mentor for smaller businesses. Those people are also a great resource to provide volunteering to various non-profits. Biltmore Farms has positioned The Ramble and our Biltmore Park Town Square to attract those persons.

We offer houses of all different price points from a condominium that’s $190,000 to a $1.5 million home in Biltmore Park connected by sidewalk, greenway trails, and small pocket parks. The residential neighborhoods are connected via green way trails to the local K-12 public school and also to Town Square which is an urban density, mixed-use, planned community where we have offices, retail, entertainment, apartments, hotels, condominiums, and town homes.

We aim to improve one’s daily life by reducing the miles driven or time in a car. We want to give you back that freedom to exercise at the YMCA, work an extra hour at the office, or more importantly spend that extra time with your family on the baseball fields, kayaking down the French Broad River, or whatever you like to do.

The Ramble is very much a low density residential community based on Frederick L. Olmsted’s planning principles which include a series of parks connected by trails that bring people out of their homes to mingle with other residents in the community. The Living Well Center is where you go to meet people while exercising or attending cooking classes.

We also offer residents the chance to listen to presentations from fellow residents on things of interest to them. We hold spinning classes and we’ve hosted various non-profit dinners. All this is to create community because one thing we miss in life if we’re at our computer terminal most of the day is the interaction with other people. So we’ve geared everything we do to create a community, not just sell homes, lease apartments, or rent out hotel rooms overnight. Everything Biltmore Farms does is an intellectual thought-process of building communities. Land and real estate holdings just happen to be our pallet.

Damien: As a personal resident of Asheville, I can say your pallet is looking great.

Jack: Thank you, Damien.

Damien: Thank you, Jack. We look forward to catching up with you again next spring for some of your thoughts on the real estate markets.

Jack: I look forward to it.

To learn more about Biltmore Farms Communities including The Ramble, Biltmore Lake, and Biltmore Park Town Square call an independent community advisor at Private Mountain Communities at 888-517-3322

Private Mountain Communities offers a real estate advisory service and cost free buyers resource center that showcases greater Asheville communities and real estate offerings. You can visit us at our Discovery Showroom, the regions most comprehensive preview center located in the Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville NC or log onto our website and search for properties that are a match for you using our online Community Finder Lifestyle Survey.

Asheville getting another route to the Big Apple

By Mark Barrett • August 17, 2010

ASHEVILLE — Local travelers will get another option to get to New York starting Oct. 31, when US Airways begins twice-daily nonstop service between the city's LaGuardia Airport and Asheville Regional AirportUS Airways' flights will offer convenient connections for business travelers and should create some downward pressure on fares between New York and Asheville, said airport Director Lew Bleiweis.
US Airways' schedule “allows a businessperson to go up (to New York) in the morning, conduct business and come back the same day,” he said.
Delta Air Lines flies once daily between Asheville and LaGuardia, and Continental Airlines has one flight a day — scheduled to increase to twice a day next month — to Newark Liberty International Airport in northern New Jersey.
US Airways will offer early morning and late afternoon departures from Asheville and afternoon departures from LaGuardia. Delta's LaGuardia flight leaves Asheville at midday.
The Delta flight has attracted good passenger loads, and fares on it have crept up as a result, Bleiweis said. US Airways' move could result in more competitive fares from all three airlines, he said.
Asheville Regional has been able to lure additional air service to several destinations in recent years, and recent growth in passenger levels makes it more attractive to carriers. The fiscal year that ended June 30 was apparently the airport's busiest ever as measured by commercial passenger enplanements.
Asheville is one of seven airports where US Airways said Monday it will begin LaGuardia service. The list includes Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport in South Carolina, which will have one nonstop daily.
The moves resulted from the expiration of a deal in which US Airways leased some of its LaGuardia flight slots to another airline, said US Airways spokeswoman Michelle Mohr. It is also expanding LaGuardia service to three cities.
The airline proposed last year transferring some of its landing rights at LaGuardia to Delta in return for flight slots at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., but the carriers decided not to go ahead with the deal because of conditions imposed by the federal government.
Asheville-LaGuardia flights will be on 50-seat regional jets operated by a commuter affiliate.
LaGuardia is not a US Airways hub, but Mohr said travelers will be able to connect to flights to a number of destinations through LaGuardia, particularly other Northeastern cities.
Most may be going no farther, however. After Orlando, Fla., the New York area is the second-most popular destination for people flying out of Asheville, according to airport statistics.
US Airways had offered two nonstop flights between Asheville and LaGuardia until stopping the service in November 2004. That was a couple of months after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, although an airline spokeswoman said at the time that the timing was coincidental.

To learn more about retirement, vacation and second homes in the Asheville area call the experts at Private Mountain Communities at 888-517-3322.

Private Mountain Communities offers a real estate advisory service and cost free buyers resource center that showcases greater Asheville communities and real estate offerings. You can visit us at our Discovery Showroom, the regions most comprehensive preview center located in the Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville NC or log onto our website and search for properties that are a match for you using our online Community Finder Lifestyle Survey.

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Biltmore Park living Family enjoys urban village with small-town feel in South Asheville

By Paul Clark • July 14, 2010

A farm boy from the Midwest, Joe Frank loves waking up early at his condominium at Biltmore Park Town Square to see the sun rise.
His wife, Patty, joins him on the porch for coffee, and the two discuss their day. Will they walk to Barnes & Noble to look at books? Will they go to Travinia Italian Restaurant for lunch? Certainly, they will go to the Reuter Family YMCA for some exercise.



And they will walk wherever they go. Other than groceries, they can get pretty much everything they need on foot in Biltmore Park.
That's if they go out. Retired, with one of their four sons living nearby, Patty and Joe Frank "have just about everything they need in Biltmore Park", they say. That means Patty, a retired high school English teacher, can read her book by the light of the living room window. It means Joe, a retiredexecutive and accomplished cook, can experiment with ramps and eggs in the kitchen.

Their son and neighbor, Tim Frank, who walks to work at Volvo Headquarters nearby, picked out their 1,600-square-foot home. It's one of 21 condos that Biltmore Farms and Crosland, developer of Biltmore Park Town Square, have sold. They built 37 and have plans to build 27 more. The condos range in price from $210,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $383,000 for three bedrooms.

What's noticeable about the Franks' home is the height of the ceilings. From crown molding to base molding, the ceilings are tall enough to accommodate 93-inch doors that impart a grand feel to their two-bedroom, two-bath condo. Painted a latte color (as is the molding), they contrast nicely with cream-in-your-coffee-colored walls. The Franks' unit was decorated by their son, Beau Frank, a designer who lives in New York.

“We came in, and it looked like this,” Patty said of their move-in day. Beau incorporated family furniture from his parents' home in Naples, Fla., with accent pieces he found that bring fun into the home. Like the old clocks throughout the house.
“Beau said, ‘You can change anything except the clocks,'” his mother said.
One of the things she loves the most is something Beau didn't have a hand in — the large, walk-in closet in the master bedroom.

"I'm a clothes horse, and for once, I finally found a place where I can get all my clothes in,” she said.
The guest bedroom, with its own luxurious bathroom, is where Joe's computer is, and on that computer are the 350 recipes he's collected through the years. When he wants to make chili, he spreads the ingredients on the gleaming granite countertops in the kitchen and rinses vegetables in the double sink. Joe designed and built three homes for his family, and in each, he had his own kitchen, separate from the family kitchen.
He like the way this kitchen is laid out. Patty likes the Koehler kitchen and bath fixtures and faucets. They're indicative of the quality appliances and workmanship that went into their home, she said. So is the setting, overlooking a planned urban scene that includes people walking to the shops, to the farmers market, to the restaurants. It's a busy scene that reminds Patty, who taught literature, of the play “Our Town” by American playwright Thornton Wilder.
“It's quiet. It's peaceful,” she said. “It makes me think that we've arrived.”

To learn more about Biltmore Town Square or other urban living communities call an independent community advisor at Private Mountain Communities at 888-517-3322

Private Mountain Communities offers a real estate advisory service and cost free buyers resource center that showcases greater Asheville communities and real estate offerings. You can visit us at our Discovery Showroom, the regions most comprehensive preview center located in the Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville NC or log onto our website and search for properties that are a match for you using our online Community Finder Lifestyle Survey.