UNC Asheville temporarily paused its negotiations on controversial plans to build a soccer stadium and additional development on 45 wooded acres south of its main campus and is forming a commission to receive public input and consider other outcomes for the property. For local activists opposed to the plan, the key word is “temporarily.”
Planned before the university’s announcement, the Save the Woods organization’s Wrap the Woods pop-up art installation will proceed as scheduled on Saturday, Sept. 6. Inspired indirectly by environmental installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the event draws direct inspiration from Asheville organizer Peggy Gardner’s 1980 undertaking to “wrap” downtown with over 200 volunteers holding a string of bed sheets to form a human chain. The protest was successful in saving numerous urban Asheville blocks from being demolished and turned into a proposed shopping mall and hotel complex.
Community members are invited to bring a sheet (used, from a thrift shop if you’d like to paint a message on it) and meet at 9:30 a.m., at the intersection of Weaver Boulevard and University Heights near the round-about, or at the intersection of Weaver Boulevard and Broadway near Asheville Botanical Garden. The Wrap event is slated to run 10-11 a.m. To learn more, visit avl.mx/ewz…