UNC Asheville’s proposal for its 45-acre urban forest is a wholly inappropriate abomination on multiple levels. It is a contemptuous eff you to the community. It is a radical departure from its stated mission. It is out of step with other North Carolina colleges and universities. It is distant government overreach.
UNCA, with Asheville City Soccer Club, proposes to bulldoze the mature forest of 20,000 trees to build a 5,000-seat stadium literally off the backyards of one of Asheville’s oldest neighborhoods, Five Points. A quiet residential neighborhood will be converted to a commercial zone of stadium lights, noises and thousands of cars streaming through very narrow streets. This is a wrecking ball to our lives on multiple levels.
The forest ecosystem with numbers of 75- to 100-plus-year-old trees is what “Tree Campus”/“Green Campus” UNCA plans to bulldoze on its designated Millennial Campus. The state government in Raleigh set up millennial campuses via the political appointees of the UNC Board of Governors. It is a way to give private corporations sweetheart deals to profit off publicly owned assets with very little to no local zoning and planning oversight. Supposedly, it would help UNCA with finances, but the track record of these making money is iffy. So UNCA is now in the business of little oversight real estate development. Meanwhile, it has cut academic programs and faculty. UNCA has drifted very far from its liberal arts education focus. What’s next, a hotel on Chestnut Ridge?…