ASHEVILLE — In a meeting room above Westville Pub in West Asheville on Friday evening, a group of residents and business owners discussed ways to guide development along Haywood Road.

The group is one of many resident-led neighborhood and corridor planning efforts in Asheville. With a recent increase in growth and development in some Asheville neighborhoods, resident involvement is becoming more prevalent and more urgent.

“The reason we’re doing this is to be proactive, so that we don’t end up in a crisis mode like Merrimon Avenue,” said Alice Oglesby, a group member and past president of the West Asheville Business Association.

Last year, developers built a Staples office supply store on Merrimon Avenue, earning criticism from people who said it didn’t fit with the area, calling the store the “Staples wall” because of its fortlike wall facing the street.

A group of residents formed a Merrimon study group to see that similar developments don’t happen again. They’re also looking at ways to improve walkability with better pedestrian infrastructure and to ease traffic along the busy road.

The city recently sent a survey drafted by the group to residents and business owners along or near the North Asheville corridor. It asks what specific development on the street people like or dislike and what they would like to see on that road.

On Friday night, the Haywood Road planning group discussed ways to do its own survey, examining needs and wants along the West Asheville main street.

The group’s goal is to preserve the character of the West Asheville thoroughfare and get ahead of the development trend that Merrimon experienced.

Scott Shuford, planning director for the city, said one thing is absolutely necessary for successful neighborhood and corridor planning: finding an agreement among the developers, residents, business owners and the city.

“You try to tailor something that tries to meet everyone’s needs,” he said.

That includes protecting neighbors from harmful development but also upholding private property rights. The end result, he said, is a balance often absent from the planning process.

Setting down development guidelines and building relationships with developers, Chris Pelly said, allows residents to break free of the reactionary process of fighting development as it goes through the planning process.

“We’re kind of in a defensive posture,” said Pelly, the president of the Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods and former candidate for Asheville City Council.

“It’s allowing people to define how they want to grow,” he said.

The developers’ perspective

Mike Plemmons, executive director of the Council of Independent Business Owners, said following neighborhood guidelines can be hard for a developer. Money often dictates what a developer can build.

“It all comes down to the bottom line,” he said. “It really depends on whether the person can make enough money to make it work.”

Residents’ fear of change can also strain relationships between developers and neighbors.

“There are some folks who are scared of change, and it’s because of that fear they don’t want any development or growth,” said Gerald Green, a private urban planner who is also involved with the Merrimon group.

Green has worked on some high-profile development proposals in the city. The proposals include a condominium development that will be built near the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and the controversial Kenilworth Heights development plan that was proposed for the top of Beaucatcher Mountain but recently withdrawn from the city planning process.

The challenge, he said, is explaining to neighbors when a request can’t be met because it would be cost-prohibitive to the project. But most times he finds residents to be realistic in their expectations.

“There are certain limits beyond where you can go,” he said.

Broadway, north of Interstate 240, is one example of corridor planning. In 2001, it was designated as a neighborhood corridor district.

Development, however, has been sparse since the road got its new zoning designation.

The neighborhood corridor district encourages mixed-use development, a popular building type that includes commercial and residential space in one structure.

Alan Glines, a planner with the city, said mixed-use buildings are encouraged but can cost more.

Because a mixed-use structure can have a number of different kinds of tenants, rent and other costs can offset higher construction costs.

“I think it may cost more, but probably the returns are higher,” he said.

Helping connect neighbors

Although neighborhood planning is largely concentrated on guiding development, it also can focus on improving the social aspects of an area.

When Luella Heetderks first moved to the West End/Clingman neighborhood in the 1980s, she said her soon-to-be husband had bought the house they live in now for $8,000.

It had kudzu vines growing inside and was in total disrepair, as were many of the houses in that neighborhood.

“It was just kind of a real quiet, isolated neighborhood of people that really didn’t connect with each other,” she said.

But within the past 10 years, the neighborhood has experienced a renaissance, largely because of efforts from the West End/Clingman Neighborhood Association that was formed in the mid-1990s.

Heetderks, who had served on the neighborhood board, said residents came together to look at ways to clean up what used to be a run-down area.

The neighborhood efforts connected a racial divide, bringing the Clingman area, a traditional African-American settlement, together with the majority white West End neighborhood.

When it was formed, Heetderks said the neighborhood association gave residents an opportunity to develop guidelines for development in their community, such as the inclusion of affordable housing options.

However, even with a citizens’ master plan in place, there haven’t been any enforceable guidelines established for development in the neighborhood.

The concept of including citizens in the planning process is not new to Asheville, but it is gaining prominence in city government. In their January retreat, Asheville City Council decided to look at neighborhood planning as one of their long-term priorities.

Former Mayor Leni Sitnick, a proponent of citizen involvement during her tenure, said she is glad to see neighbors becoming involved in the planning process of the city.

“This is not rocket science. You have to talk to the people and make sure they’re included,” she said. “Nobody knows their own neighborhood better than the people who live there.”

On the Web

n www.ashevillecan.org — Coalition of Asheville Neighborhoods

• www.ci.asheville.nc.us/planning/smallarea.htm — Small Area Plans, part of the City of Asheville’s 2010 Plan