Today’s round of questions, my smart-aleck replies and the real answers:
Question: Regarding Salvage Station, are the rumors true that they signed a deal to move into the old Sonopress facility/outdoor space up here in Weaverville? Word is the town approved the deal late last year.
My answer: Word is I’m hitting the lottery this weekend. Boyle out! Please, stop the cheering!
Real answer: The rumor mill has been spinning hard on this one, but no deal has been inked yet.
Katie Hild, marketing director for Salvage Station, the popular outdoor concert venue formerly located at 466 Riverside Drive near the River Arts District, told me she and founder/owner Danny McClinton continue to look for a new home. The former Sonopress building remains in the running, but it’s far from a done deal.
Salvage Station was going to have to move this year because of eminent domain and the NCDOT plopping the new I-26 Connector through part of the land it leased. But then Tropical Storm Helene added a double whammy Sept. 27 when it flooded the premises and damaged most of its equipment.
Tropical Storm Helene flooded Salvage Station and damaged most of its equipment.// Credit: Salvage Station Facebook page
“We have not signed anything,” Hild said. “We are not committed to Weaverville. Post-Helene, the reality is the landscape of our whole region has changed, and we’re just trying to get a better sense of what that looks like before we make a big commitment.”
Hild and McClinton have looked at the former Sonopress facility and liked what they saw, as it offers potential for an indoor/outdoor space. As Hild said, “It’s a huge building, a huge piece of property.”
The building owners are trying to make it an art and commercial space, and a community asset, Hild said, and that’s appealing, too.
“So that’s the vision, and having something like Salvage Station be the cornerstone of that would be absolutely a boon for the whole area,” Hild said. “It’s just a matter of it working out, if it’s feasible financially.”
Weaverville is still in the running, Hild said.
“We are still excited about that space,” Hild said. “We just haven’t made a commitment yet, because we’re still trying to pick up the pieces from what we were dealt with Helene.”
Weaverville Mayor Patrick Fitzsimmons told me Thursday that he was under the impression that Salvage Station had plans to move into what’s now called the Park 108 building, formerly known as Sonopress. But he also said he hadn’t talked with McClinton “for a couple of months.”
The 416,000-square-foot former Sonopress building in Weaverville has about 375,000 square feet of leasable space, owner Eddie Dewey said. He noted the building could accommodate Salvage Station, with an indoor/outdoor space for concerts. // Photo from Buncombe County GIS
“We certainly would love for them to come to town,” Fitzsimmons said. “I know that I’ve met with Danny and Katie at the Park 108, and we thought that was in the works, but obviously some things may have come up. But let’s hope that they still choose to come here.”
If they do, Fitzsimmons noted, the transition should be smooth.
“So there is no permitting or requirements that the town would require for that building,” Fitzsimmons said. “So, I hope they’re still interested in that, that they’re still coming. The plans, I thought, were farther down the line than that.”
The Park 108 building dates to 1984 and has an appraised value of $10.6 million, according to Buncombe County property records. Sonopress, later known as Arvato Digital Services, operated the CD production facility until early 2016, according to an article I wrote in late 2015 for the Citizen Times.
The building is now owned by Made Monticello LLC, whose registered agent is Eddie Dewey, who is part of another partnership that owns 11 buildings in the River Arts District.
Dewey told me Thursday that he has talked to McClinton and Hild about the possibility of locating there, an idea that first came up after Salvage Station was notified the NCDOT would take the Riverside Drive property..
The Park 108 building is enormous — about 416,000 square feet under roof and 375,000 leasable square feet, Dewey said. It already has multiple tenants, including a French Broad Chocolate production facility, a cookie company, and a guitar operation. Most recently, Moog Music “just moved their manufacturing line up there,” Dewey said.
“So think about a Salvage Station and putting them up there,” Dewey said. “We have a big yard. We have nighttime parking, and some programming (already) in. It’s also a little bit of a food desert.”
The Park 108 building is located on about 35 acres on the northwest corner of the I-26/Monticello Road interchange.
“What is attractive to us about outdoor programming is we’ve got 35 acres, we’ve got a 2 ½-acre field, we’ve got mountain views and we have 700 parking spaces that sit empty from five o’clock on Friday afternoon until 8 a.m. on Monday,” Dewey said. “It doesn’t have to be like a 3,000 person outdoor venue or an indoor venue. It can be something else. But we’re just looking at, ‘How can we turn this into more of a community asset?’”
As a property owner in the RAD, Dewey said he’s completely sympathetic to Salvage Station’s plight in trying to save some of its equipment and get a handle on the financial complexities of a possible relocation.
Fitzsimmons also noted that Weaverville is excited about the potential for redevelopment of another former industrial plant, the old Balcrank facility at 115 Reems Creek Road. (Balcrank moved to a new location about a decade ago.)
“Something’s gonna happen there,” Fitzsimmons said of the old Balcrank location. “We’re talking to several different interested parties, and there’s something interesting that will happen there.”
Fitzsimmon noted that a lot of artists have been displaced from the River Arts District in Asheville, and from Marshall in Madison County.
“So we, too, are trying to attract the artist economy to Weaverville,” he said.
A private tech company rented out the entire Grove Park Inn last week, departing on Jan. 17. // Photo provided by Omni Grove Park Inn
Question: I’m a member of the Grove Park Inn Sports Center, and we were recently notified that the entire Grove Park Inn was bought out for an entire week — all of the restaurants, shops, etc. No one was allowed inside the building except for the private group. We could use the Sports Center, but we are curious as to who is so important and so wealthy that they rented out all of the restaurants. We could not eat at any of them!
My answer: I once toyed with the idea of renting out an entire room at the Grove Park Inn for a night. But then I saw the rates…
Real answer: So this transpired last week.
“This past week, we hosted a private tech group that reserved the hotel for the duration of their conference,” Omni Grove Park Inn spokesperson Isabel Miller told me via email.
The group departed Friday, Jan. 17, and the property was fully reopened to the public at 11 a.m. that day.
So, enjoy those restaurants once again!
The Grove Park Inn has about 500 rooms, and rates for this weekend were ranging from $300 to $400 a night, or a minimum of $150,000 a night for the whole shebang. Multiply that by a whole week and you’re pushing three quarters of a million dollars.
That’s probably high, because you would get a gigantic group discount and weekday rates, but still, someone spent a gazillion simoleons. So, I’m just going to go ahead and say it must’ve been Zuckerberg and friends.
Seriously, I have no idea who it was, but if anyone has the skinny on what group it was, drop me a line. You know I’m nosy.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Got a question? Send it to John Boyle at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org or 828-337-0941. His Answer Man columns appear each Tuesday and Friday. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-03 14:11:00
(The Center Square) – Hurricane Helene’s death toll in North Carolina has grown to 107 and is 236 across seven states.
Gov. Josh Stein shared news of a death in the Avery County community of Newland. The wife of a couple camping was among those who died in earlier confirmations; the husband’s death was added on Thursday after his body was found.
The governor said the couple was camping on the last weekend of September when the storm hit.
This weekend marks the beginning of the 28th week of recovery. Damage is estimated at $60 billion.
Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Dekle Beach, Fla., on Sept. 26. It was expected to come north to the Appalachian Mountains; however, the rainfall total from its dissipation there exceeded all forecasts.
Some places got more than 30 inches, most were at 24 or more. Due to terrain, water often rushed before it pooled and flooded – very unlike the flooding that happens in the coastal plains.
AccuWeather said rainfall totals were 32.51 inches in Jeter Mountain, 31.36 inches in Busick, and 26.65 inches in Hughes.
Forty-two died in Buncombe County, 11 in Yancey and 10 in Henderson.
Respective state officials say 49 were killed in South Carolina, 34 in Georgia, 25 in Florida, 18 in Tennessee, two in Virginia and one in Indiana.
Numbers were confirmed by The Center Square based on information supplied by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services; South Carolina Department of Public Safety; Georgia Emergency Management Agency; Florida Department of Law Enforcement; Tennessee Emergency Management Agency; Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin; and the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office in Indiana.
Helene is the fourth most deadly hurricane from the Atlantic Basin in the last three-quarters of a century. Only Katrina (2005, deaths 1,392), Audrey (1957, deaths 416) and Camille (1969, deaths 256) killed more people.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-02 14:21:00
(The Center Square) – Minority benefit against the majority giving up “agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills” in what is described as a valley of an artificial intelligence journey is likely in the next few years, says one voice among hundreds in a report from Elon University.
John M. Stuart’s full-length essay, one of 200 such responses in “Being Human in 2035: How Are We Changing in the Age of AI?,” speaks to the potential problems foreseen as artificial intelligence continues to be incorporated into everyday life by many at varying levels from professional to personal to just plain curious. The report authored by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie of Elon’s Imagining the Digital Future Center says “the fragile future of some foundational and unique traits” found only in humans is a concern for 6 in 10.
“I fear – the time being – that while there will be a growing minority benefitting ever more significantly with these tools, most people will continue to give up agency, creativity, decision-making and other vital skills to these still-primitive AIs and the tools will remain too centralized and locked down with interfaces that are simply out of our personal control as citizens,” writes Smart, a self-billed global futurist, foresight consultant, entrepreneur and CEO of Foresight University. “I fear we’re still walking into an adaptive valley in which things continue to get worse before they get better. Looking ahead past the next decade, I can imagine a world in which open-source personal AIs are trustworthy and human-centered.
“Many political reforms will reempower our middle class and greatly improve rights and autonomy for all humans, whether or not they are going through life with PAIs. I would bet the vast majority of us will consider ourselves joined at the hip to our digital twins once they become useful enough. I hope we have the courage, vision and discipline to get through this AI valley as quickly and humanely as we can.”
Among the ideas by 2035 from the essays, Paul Saffo offered, “The first multi-trillion-dollar corporation will employ no humans except legally required executives and board, have no offices, own no property and operate entirely through AI and automated systems.”
Saffo is a futurist and technology forecaster in the Silicon Valley of California, and a consulting professor at the School of Engineering at Stanford.
In another, Vint Cerf wrote, “We may find it hard to distinguish between artificial personalities and the real ones. That may result in a search for reliable proof of humanity so that we and bots can tell the difference.”
Cerf is generally known as one of the “fathers of the internet” alongside Robert Kahn and for the internet protocol suite, colloquially known as TCP/IP.
Working alongside the well-respected Elon University Poll, the survey asked, “What might be the magnitude of overall change in the next decade in people’s native operating systems and operations as we more broadly adapt to and use advanced AIs by 2035? From five choices, 61% said considerable (deep and meaningful change 38%) and dramatic (fundamental, revolutionary change 23%) and another 31% said moderate and noticeable, meaning clear and distinct.
Only 5% said minor change and 3% no noticeable change.
“This report is a revealing and provocative declaration to the profound depth of change people are undergoing – often without really noticing at all – as we adapt to deeper uses of advancing AI technology,” Anderson said. “Collectively, these experts are calling on humanity to think intentionally and carefully, taking wise actions now, so we do not sleepwalk into an AI future that we never intended and do not want.”
In another question, respondents answered whether artificial intelligence and related technologies are likely to change the essence of being human. Fifty percent said changes were equally better and worse, 23% said mostly for the worse, and 16% said mostly for the better.
The analysis predicted change mostly negative in nine areas: social and emotional intelligence; capacity and willingness to think deeply about complex concepts; trust in widely shared values and norms; confidence in their native abilities; empathy and application of moral judgment; mental well-being; sense of agency; sense of identity and purpose; and metacognition.
Mostly positive, the report says, are curiosity and capacity to learn; decision-making and problem-solving; and innovative thinking and creativity.
Anderson and Rainie and those working on the analysis did not use large language models for writing and editing, or in analysis of the quantitative data for the qualitative essays. Authors said there was brief experimentation and human realization “there were serious flaws and inaccuracies.” The report says 223 of 301 who responded did so “fully generated out of my own mind, with no LLM assistance.”
SUMMARY: On March 14, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dramatically reduce funding for seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which awarded $266.7 million in 2024. The order aims to eliminate non-essential functions and cut agency personnel to legal minimums. The move sparked backlash from library and museum organizations, warning it would severely impact early literacy programs, internet access, job assistance, and community services. Critics urged Congress to intervene, while the administration framed the cuts as part of efforts to reduce government waste under the U.S. DOGE Service initiative led by Elon Musk.
