ASHEVILLE – A relatively small piece of city taxpayer funding for the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce turned into a forum Tuesday on the local arts economy and voter pushback against growth.
The City Council voted 6-1 at a regular meeting to give $100,000 to the chamber’s business expansion and recruitment arm, the Economic Development Coalition.
The EDC has been involved with deals including New Belgium Brewing, Canadian-based manufacturing and engineering company Linamar Corp., and Ohio-based GE Aviation, an aircraft parts and systems manufacturer. Now, the EDC wants to shift direction with a five-year plan, “AVL 5X5 Vision 2020,” that focuses on getting 50 “high-growth” companies to make Asheville their headquarters along with the creation of 3,000 new jobs that pay an average of $50,000, Ben Teague, the coalition’s executive director told council members.
“Your funding is imperative to moving our plans forward,” Teague said.
But removal of arts and culture from the five “clusters” on which the new plan focuses gave some pause. Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who cast the lone “no” vote, questioned whether EDC really made a difference in business decisions to locate in Asheville and said the chamber had not been a good partner to the city in trying to get control of some of the local hotel tax money. Voters in this month’s council election, meanwhile, said they wanted construction and other types of growth to slow, Bothwell said.
“Spending city money to speed growth isn’t necessarily on their agenda,” he said to Teague.
The EDC provides support to the city in the form of research and reports, site selection and retention and expansion project management, entrepreneurship development and economic development marketing, Sam Powers, city director of community and economic development, said in a memo to council members.
City Manager Gary Jackson had the ability to execute an agreement with the EDC, but the $100,000 was above the amount the city manager is authorized to allocate and he needed the nod from the elected officials.
Vice Mayor Marc Hunt, who lost his re-election bid this month, defended the EDC, saying it provides a service that is one of the best in the region. Hunt said the coalition’s work, along with that of the city and Buncombe County government, was vital in bringing industries such as New Belgium, Linamar and GE Aviation. Saying those businesses would have come anyway, “is absolutely not true,” the vice mayor said.
“This initiative is focused on high-paying jobs,” that will “allow people to earn more tomorrow than they do today,” he said.
“It’s not about hotels and hospitality, which do have under-paying jobs.”
Hunt said the highly dispersed arts economy may have been hard for the EDC to get its arms around as a group traditionally involved in industrial recruitment and expansion.
Councilman Gordon Smith voted for the funding but said he was torn because of the exclusion of the arts. That kind of cultural boost is important to residents, visitors and even company executives looking where to locate, he said.
“They place great value on being able to see artists grow and thrive,” Smith said.
He asked that the EDC continue to work with local artists and look at how to help boost that part of the economy and culture.
Smith, like Bothwell, said he was also not happy about the lack of help from the chamber in getting some of the county hotel tax allocated to affordable housing or some other city service. The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority, which is staffed by another arm of the chamber, the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau, controls the tax. The TDA recently got state lawmakers to increase the hotel tax, but maintained use of the money for marketing and projects intended to increase hotel business.
But Smith said he didn’t want to use the EDC funding as a “whipping stick” and supported the new job growth program.
He also asked that the coalition consider helping small local downtown businesses that he said are in danger of getting pushed out by larger chain stores.
Teague agreed that the EDC would continue to work with artists. With local downtown businesses Teague said the coalition usually tries to direct some of the smallest businesses to organizations that specialize in helping them, but he agreed that was an important area of focus, calling such downtown stores the “heartbeat of the area.”
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