ASHEVILLE — Like many of her fellow millennials, Carolyn Stotts found herself beckoned to Western North Carolina for its active lifestyle.
The 24-year-old wedding photographer did a summer internship at an Asheville-based magazine in 2011 while a student at UNC Chapel Hill.
After running her own photography business in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area for a year and a half, Stotts thought, “I’d really love to shoot more in the mountains.”
So she moved to Arden in August with a roommate and her 2-year-old dog, PJ, a 40-pound black-lab mix nicknamed “Weej.”
Stotts and her fellow millennials, generally people of ages 15 to 34, are at the forefront of recent population growth in Buncombe County, just as they have fueled population growth in 8 of North Carolina’s 10 most-populated counties.
Millennial population growth over the past five years has outpaced baby boomers, people of ages 50 to 69, and far outdistanced Generation X, those of ages 35 to 49.
For Western North Carolina, the trend presents a mix of good and bad — and it delivers new challenges.
The parents paying for Stotts photos generally come from the baby boomer generation, but that responsibility will soon fall to Gen X parents, and their numbers are not growing as quickly. If Stotts’ business is to survive in the long run, the region needs a healthy number of Gen Xers.
Asheville is lucky in that millennials and baby boomers want similar things, such as walkable neighborhoods. But sidewalks and greenways are costly and Asheville has struggled to pay for both.
And millennials also are less often able to pay for a home, something that would root them in a community, and they are more likely to become trapped in low-wage jobs, such as those in the service industry.
U.S. Census data show from 2009 through 2014, the population of the region comprising Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties grew by 5,697 millennials, 4,901 baby boomers and 2,711 people considered as being a part of Generation X.
Those numbers change what had been the prevailing perception of the region’s growth for decades, said Tom Tveidt, an Asheville-based research economist and owner of SYNEVA Economics LLC, a consulting firm that focuses on local and regional analysis.
“In the nearly 20 years that I have followed the demographics of this area, the common narrative describing the changes in population has always been the significant impact of the baby boomers,” said Tveidt, who also is past chair of The Council for Community and Economic Research, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization.
“Over the last five years, the millennial generation has overtaken the baby boomers as the major source of population change,” Tveidt said.
The estimated 2014 population for Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties was 475,361, according to Census data.
Regardless of the recent millennial surge, some researchers forecast the migration of baby boomers to the region during the coming years will be significant.
“Between 2015 and 2020, it is projected that (the) greatest increase in the number of households will be among those between the ages of 65 and 74, increasing by 1,104 (20.4 percent) households during this time,” according to a January report that assessed the housing needs of Buncombe, Henderson, Madison and Transylvania counties.
Though some Asheville natives and longtime residents might view the swelling influx of newcomers with suspicion, they also are a reflection of success.
“The diverse network of restaurants, combined with the mountain culture — that’s heaven for a lot of (young) people,” said James Johnson, director of the Urban Investment Strategies Center, Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC Chapel Hill.
But Asheville could be challenged in continuing to attract younger people if it can’t foster enough adequately paying job opportunities, said Marty Romitti, senior vice president of the Virginia-based Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness.
That’s already a problem in the city, where housing prices are skyrocketing in some neighborhoods, like West Asheville, and the top two employer industries are relatively low-wage retail and tourism.
In West Asheville, the price of homes has more than doubled in the past decade and a half alone, climbing from $73 a square foot to $187.
Average annual wages last year for retail trade jobs in the Asheville metro area were $24,758, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The metro area is a federally defined region comprising four counties: Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison.
Average annual wages last year for leisure and hospitality jobs in the Asheville metro area were $17,602, federal data show.
The federal government defines the leisure and hospitality sector as employment in arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodation and food services.
“Asheville has half the pieces of the puzzle,” Romitti said. “It already has the natural beauty to leverage.”
Which is what brings people like Lakota Chesz, 21, to leave Colorado’s Front Range and move to Western North Carolina.
“I like the mountain feel, the (French Broad) river and how green it is here,” said Chesz, who works at the Fresh Quarter Produce in downtown’s Grove Arcade. “There aren’t as many green things in Denver.”
And Asheville is a place where “I don’t feel overwhelmed constantly,” she said. Plus, “you can pretty much do any outdoor sport you’re interested in: tubing, rock climbing, mountain biking…”
The challenge before Asheville, Romitti said, is to develop “innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities for younger” people moving here. That’s where the underwhelming growth of Generation X could pose problems.
Gen X’ers are in the thrust of their career, said Josh Dorfman, who heads Venture Asheville, the Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County‘s entrepreneurship initiative.
“That’s the group we want to harness — either for their expertise and experience to be mentors or for their investment dollars,” Dorfman said.
The question for Asheville, Dorfman said, is: “How do we emerge as a startup hub without a tier-one research university?”
“It’s very challenging to find a city in the U.S. that has done so,” said Dorfman, who also is managing director of Asheville Angels, an investor network that locates and funds startups in the region.
With such expertise in place, Dorfman said it would then be possible to create jobs for millennials who are moving here.
“If we could do it in a city our size, we’d arguably be the first,” he said. “That’s the model we’re trying to prove can be done.”
Success in that area would make Sealy Chipley, 28, and Brian Taylor, 31, very happy. The couple and business partners are tired of seeing their close friends move from Asheville because they can’t find good jobs that pay enough.
“We have seven friends who either have left or are planning to leave,” said Chipley, founder and owner of Chipley Consulting, an Asheville planning and communications firm. “You get tired of being poor.”
“The problem isn’t attracting (younger) people here,” said Taylor, an urban planner at Chipley’s firm. “The problem is keeping them.”
Like Chesz and Stotts, Chipley and Taylor moved here for the region’s physical magnificence.
That’s true also of retirees.
Donna Bailey, 65, and her husband became full-time residents about two and a half years ago, she said, after splitting time between Kiawaha Island in South Carolina and The Cliffs at Walnut Cove in South Asheville.
Within a 14-mile radius of her home sit many restaurants, several movie theaters, art museums and the Brevard Music Center, she said.
“This area has a bundle” of activities, said Bailey.
She said she believes that’s why 36 out of the 40 new residences under construction in her community are set to be home to retirees.
“They want to be in a young, active community with lots to do,” she said.
A record number of members, about 2,300, at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNC Asheville shows Bailey could be on to something.
Center director Catherine Frank said 90 percent of institute members have relocated to the Asheville area “from somewhere else.”
These are people who have chosen Asheville because the population already here is active, Frank said.
“They’re not interested in sitting it out for the rest of their lives,” Frank said.
Instead, institute members are involved local organizations including the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, the French Broad River-preservation nonprofit organization, RiverLink; and the Asheville-based MANNA Food Bank, Frank said.
Bailey said the number of organizations that exist in the city and the way Asheville itself is laid out make it an easy place to become involved.
She is taking advantage of being a full-time resident of such a community by donating her time and energy.
She’s helped the Asheville Arts Museum raise money. She’s helped develop a women’s golf team and program at UNC Asheville. And she’s created a mentorship program for UNCA student-athletes.
Millennials might not be as involved as their baby boomer counterparts, and for that reason are not always as rooted in the community.
DeWayne Barton, 48, said he has watched the number of millennials increase during the past few years in the Burton Street neighborhood of West Asheville, where he lives.
DeWayne Barton on the growth of Asheville
“I don’t see a lot of older people moving in here,” said Barton, a self-described “social entrepreneur.” He heads the Asheville nonprofit, Hood Huggers International, which uses art to connect communities.
“But the millennials don’t seem so community oriented; I don’t see them as active in the community,” Barton said.
That disappoints him because much of his work has focused on binding his historically black neighborhood closer together. Barton, who is African American, also said he doesn’t see any black millennials arriving.
The growth of millennials and retirees could play into the strengths that the Asheville region already has. That’s because millennials and baby boomers share critical commonalities, according to a 2014 American Planning Associationreport.
Both generations prioritize quality-of-life amenities above most other factors when choosing where to live, the association authors concluded.
“Job prospects and economic health are not the overriding factors for choosing where to live,” the report stated. “Quality of life features such as transportation options, affordability, parks, local vitality, health, and presence of friends and family are equally or often more important. By a near 2-to-1 margin, respondents believe that investing in communities, over recruiting companies, is the key to growth.”
A healthy mixture of demographics equals healthy cities, said Aaron Renn, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York, whose areas of expertise are urban issues and economic development. The institute is a policy-research nonprofit organization.
Cities with a balance of younger and older people have “a more balanced taxpayer environment,” Renn said.
Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said that’s one thing she likes about Asheville: “It’s not dominated by one age group. You see people in their 20s and people in their 60s at the same events.”
Chipley and Taylor, the millennial couple and business partners, agreed that Asheville generally has done a solid job by “investing in place” to cater to both millennials and baby boomers.
The continuing development of the River Arts District is one example, Taylor said.
But community leaders must do a better job providing affordable and different types of housing, Chipley said.
Asheville seems to have harnessed the talents and abilities that baby boomers have to offer.
Among the region’s challenges is to do the same with millennials — and to recruit people with the skill sets those of Generation X possess, regardless of age, Dorfman said.
Venture Asheville’s head said he and his Asheville-Buncombe EDC colleagues aren’t explicitly targeting Gen X’ers in their recruitment efforts.
Members of that generation simply have the know-how to mentor new entrepreneurs effectively and scale up their operations swiftly, Dorfman said.
“That should then create more local jobs,” he said.
A formal exploration of how to maximize the expertise offered by Generation X could be well worth the time and effort, said James Coman, 61, a retired planner for Buncombe County who lives in Leicester.
“That would be right on the mark,” Coman said.
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