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.

“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.”

“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.

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/.

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