ASHEVILLE – While it may be difficult to understand now, with the downtown area a well-traveled hub of national tourism, there was a time when the city’s center was largely abandoned and considered a dying concern.
When Bob Carr, a former television announcer at an Atlanta CBS affiliate, and his wife, Ellen, moved to Asheville to help run the shoe store founded in 1953 by Ellen’s parents, Louis and Sylvia Resnikoff, after the couple started having health issues in the 1970s, it didn’t take long for the Georgia transplants to notice the exodus happening around them.
Retail stores began to move away, setting up in malls and leaving vacant storefronts. Bucking that trend, and seeing the great potential for downtown, the Carrs expanded their store, Tops for Shoes along North Lexington Avenue and College Street, increasing its size by thousands of square feet.
As a business owner, volunteer and lead advocate, Robert “Bob” Jeffrey Carr played a pivotal role in saving downtown and refused to follow retail trends, insisting on a full-service store. The 78-year-old long-time business owner died of Parkinson’s Disease on Feb. 2.