Capital at Play July 2019

Todd Fowler & Jon Sarver ALFIE Loans p.12

colu m ns

Chardin Detrich & Ira Friedrichs Smart Fellers p.72

Western North Carolina's Free Spirit of Enterprise

Articles of Innovation: Robbing Our Own Cradle p.28

lo c a l i n d u s t ry

Stowaways

Wine Column: Pair Like a Pro p.52

p.33

Self-Storage Facilities in Western North Carolina

l e i s u r e & l i b at i o n

Om Outdoors Practicing Yoga Outdoors in Western North Carolina p.57

Volume IX - Edition VII complimentary edition

capitalatplay.com

July 2019

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I

n theory, one could make a case for the July Capital at Play having a general theme along the lines of “people trying to make other people’s lives better and more meaningful.” Whether we’re talking about the musings upon sustainability and proper wine selections by two of our regular columnists; the environmentally-minded efforts of the folks at Smart Feller Treeworks; the responsible real estate work that ALFIE Loans specializes in; the healthfully-minded instructors and organizations of our yoga scene; or even the tireless individuals who maintain the hundreds of area storage facilities in order that we won’t worry about (to invoke the late George Carlin) our stuff; they all contribute significantly to our region’s overall quality of life.

Allow me to bring this notion home in a decidedly more specific direction.

Here at the office we often invoke, in ways both direct and indirect, the extended CaP family. The magazine’s been going since Oby Morgan started it in 2011, so there have been more than a few staffers, contributors, clients, associates/advisors/resources, and just plain trusted friends in that family. Among the latter category is a gentleman named Scott Pritchard, principal of the Capital Directions firm, and Scott happens to have the office directly beside ours. We often have fun chats when arriving in the morning and clustering around the refrigerator/microwave nook just down the hallway. A good dude, period.

In May, several weeks back, I had the occasion to bump into Scott at the fridge, and he told me about the Riley Howell Foundation Fund that had just been established in the memory of Waynesville native Riley Howell, a graduate of Buncombe County’s TC Roberson High and a student at UNC-Charlotte, who on April 30 died protecting his fellow UNCC classmates by attempting to disarm a shooter. To say that we here in the area were devastated is far more than an understatement, so to learn that his heroic sacrifice would ultimately get dedicated to supporting families affected by gun violence was at least partial consolation. Board members Scott (who was Riley’s uncle), Riley’s mom Natalie Henry-Howell, Kevin Westmoreland (father of Riley’s longtime girlfriend, Lauren), and family friend Rachel Feichter set up the fund through our friends at the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. It will, in their words, “provide financial support to charitable organizations that serve other victims and families affected by similar tragedies.”

Through Scott, then, in an indirect but still very real way, losing Riley was like losing a member of the aforementioned CaP family—in fact, Riley was also a good friend of my son’s cousin, and through that close relationship my son had met Riley, so I couldn’t help but be affected by these connections.

I’d like to urge you to look into the fledgling organization and consider supporting its goals and activities, and in the larger sense, simply strive to always work towards making everyone’s lives better and more meaningful.

Sincerely,

Fred Mills

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Western North Carolina's Free Spirit of Enterprise

publisher

Oby Morgan associate publisher

Jeffrey Green managing editor

A trusted partner in philanthropy since 1978. w w w.cf wn c.o rg

contributing writers & photogr aphers

Evan Anderson, Emily Glaser, Anthony Harden, John Kerr, Bill Kopp, Gillie Roberts, Arthur Treff art director

Fred Mills

Bonnie Roberson

briefs and events editor

cre ative associate

Leslee Kulba

Phill Baldwin

copy editors

newsletter editor

Dasha O. Morgan, Brenda Murphy

Emily Glaser

Information & Inquiries Capital at Play is Western North Carolina’s business lifestyle magazine. It embodies the idea that capitalism thrives with creativity—that work requires an element of play. Exploring everything from local industry to the great outdoors, Capital at Play is inspiration for the modern entrepreneur.

In every edition we profile those who take the risk, those who share that risk, and those who support them—telling the untold story of how capitalists are driven by their ideas and passions.

We cater to those who see the world with curiosity, wonderment, and a thirst for knowledge.

We present information and entertainment that capitalists want, all in one location. We are the free spirit of enterprise.

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Editorial content is selected and produced because of its interest to our readership. Editorial content is not for sale and cannot be bought. Capital at Play is financially sustained by advertisers who find value in exposure alongside our unique content and to the readers who follow it.

This magazine is printed with soy based ink on recycled paper. Please recycle.

Copyright © 2019, Capital At Play, Inc. All rights reserved.

Capital at Play is a trademark of Capital At Play, Inc. Published by Capital At Play, Inc. PO Box 5615, Asheville, NC. 28813

Top: Brackett Town Farms Middle: Travis Bordley Bottom: Community Tool School at UNCA STEAM Studio

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| July 2019

Capital at Play is protec ted through Tr ademar k Regis tr ation in the United States. The content found within this publication does not necessar ily ref lec t the views of Capital At Play, Inc. and its companies. Capital At Play, Inc. and its employees are not liable for any adver tising or editor ial content found in Capital at Play. The ar ticles, photogr aphy, and illus tr ations found in Capital at Play may not be reproduced or used in any fashion without express wr it ten consent by Capital At Play, Inc.

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Capital at Play has partnered with Bclip Productions to bring the pages of each edition to life, just for you. Featured at Capitalatplay.com and our Facebook page, we give you exclusive interviews and insider info on the people, places, and faces of Capital at Play has partnered with Bclip Productions to bring the pages of each edition to life, just for you. Featuring a new enterprise throughout Western North Carolina. Visit us on social media or at our website to see the latest 60 Seconds at Play.

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At Bclip we do more than tell your story. Our business-first mentality and c creativity set us apart from other video production companies. It’s our mis help our customers sell their products, train their staff, and entertain custo video. We strive to eat, sleep, and think like the wonderful companies we w

thi s page : A VARIET Y OF BL ADES for Smar t Feller Tree Works' chainsaws. photo by Evan Anderson

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F E AT U R E D vol. ix

ed. vii

12

72

SIDELINE ENTREPRENEURS

GOING OUT ON A LIMB

TODD FOWLER & JON SARVER

CHARDIN DETRICH & IRA FRIEDRICHS

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com

9

C ON T E N T S j u l y 2 019

photo cour tesy Namaste in Nature

33

57

lo c a l i n d u s t r y

Stowaways

Self-Storage Facilities in Western North Carolina

Outdoor Yoga

Unique yoga in Western North Carolina

colu m n

briefs

22 Carolina in the West 48 The Old North State

28 A rticles of Innovation: Robbing Our Own Cradle Written by Gillie Roberts

52 Wine Column:

Pair Like a Pro

Written by John Kerr

on the cover :

Woman doing a bow pose.

10

l e i s u r e & l i b at i o n

| July 2019

p e o p l e at p l ay

8 8 The Community

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Sideline

Entrepreneurs written by bill kopp

|

photos by anthony harden

Todd Fowler and Jon Sarver of ALFIE Loans bring together accredited investors and borrowers to develop real estate throughout Western North Carolina.

T

R ADITIONALLY, WHEN A REAL ESTATE IN VESTOR NEEDS bridge funding to finance a new project, he or she has been limited to a pair of options. The investor can approach a bank for a loan, or they can seek out partners to provide the needed cash in return for a stake in the project. But as explored in Capital at Play’s August 2018 feature, “Creditworthiness, Collateral, & Capital: Entrepreneurial Funding,” a third way is gaining in popularity.

Direct lending is a means of financing that eliminates intermediaries. For smallto medium-sized investors, direct financing is an attractive option, with several significant advantages over other approaches.

In the wake of the Great Recession of the last decade, direct financing has grown in popularity, though hard figures as to its share of the lending market are difficult to come by. But on a micro level, the results of community-based direct lending are easier to observe. In our region, Asheville’s ALFIE Loans offers a means of short-term financing that’s faster and more flexible than traditional lending. And on the other side of the equation, the ALFIE (“Alternative Lending For Inspired Entrepreneurs”) business model provides opportunities that allow

12

| July 2019

JON SARVER & TODD FOWLER July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 13

Key Words Our conversation with ALFIE’s Todd Fowler and Jon Sarver was pleasingly light on industry jargon, but a few terms could use a bit of description.

Bridge Funding Temporary financing to cover shortterm expenses until borrower can exit or secure longer-term funding.

Deed of Trust Legal title of real estate/property is transferred to a trustee who holds it as security between lender and borrower.

First Position Loan Financing that asserts a primary lien upon a mortgaged property.

Investor Pool An aggregated portfolio comprising monies from a group of individual investors.

Investment Property Real estate property purchased with a goal of earning a return (via rental and/or eventual resale) on that purchase.

Mezzanine Financing Lender has the right to convert to an equity interest if the borrower defaults.

Second Position Loan Lender's lien on subject property is secondary to that of a primary lender.

14

| July 2019

accredited investors a way to profit while watching their money work toward the greater good of the community in Western North Carolina and beyond.

The firm’s principals, CEO Jon Sarver and CFO Todd Fowler, come from different business backgrounds, but their shared goal of developing viable community-based direct lending in their hometown helped bring ALFIE into being in 2015. In a few short years the fund has made more than 400 loans; current assets under ALFIE management are $26 million, with related loans totaling an additional $5 million.

The business entity that makes the loans is ALFIE Investors.

“ALFIE Investors provides short-term, common-sense real estate financing to entrepreneurs in the community,” says Sarver.

The fund draws upon private capital from a pool that currently includes 225 investors, many of whom are local to Western North Carolina. “We help local real estate entrepreneurs by providing a simple form of capital,” he says. Sarver brings to ALFIE his deep background in real estate; he notes that the kind of alternative financing offered by ALFIE is greatly needed. “Capital is really hard to find since the banking debacle of the last real estate downturn,” he says. The firm provides loans to those who don’t fit inside the box of traditional lending arrangements.

ALFIE fills two purposes, says Fowler, a former accountant.

“When the banks froze up, that gave us some real opportunity to loan money,” he says. But ALFIE also provided opportunity

for investors. “People put lots of money in CDs and earned a quarter of a percent,” he points out. “They weren’t very happy with that.” ALFIE offered the prospect of safe investment with greater return. “Those two things came together,” Fowler says.

“We were able to bring investor capital to good people [who are] good credit risks, who had some equity, and who were buying things right and fixing things up right.”

ALFIE’s Beginnings Born in Hickory and raised in Burlington, Todd Fowler went on to major in real estate and finance at Appalachian State University in Boone; after graduation he worked as a property manager, sold real estate, and owned rental properties. “I had years where I sold timesharing in Boone,” he says, with a grimace.

“I’m not sure I’m proud of that; you just did what you had to do.

“And then when ‘08 happened,” he says, “I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to make good money at this rate now.’” He earned his enrolled agent certification so he could become an accountant and do tax work. “I always managed to stay in the [real estate] business; as an accountant, real estate people needed my services.

“I kept pestering Jon to be a client.”

Born in Louisiana and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jon Sarver moved with his parents to Chapel Hill in time for July 2019 | capitalatplay.com

15

high school. At age 19 he came to Western North Carolina as a freshman at Warren Wilson College; there he majored in environmental studies with a concentration on environmental policy. As part of his studies, he spent four months in India.

Sarver had won a patent for a cup that “had a carabiner for a handle, but it turned out it was a weak patent.” The experience (“one of my first business ventures … and first business failures,” he says) taught him a lot about intellectual property and the concept of first-to-market.

In the middle ‘90s, Sarver, a lifelong avid cyclist, started a bicycle messenger service in Asheville. Launched in 1994, Asheville Bicycle Courier was, Sarver admits, “born out of a passion of riding bikes and wanting to stay in Asheville, which is a hard place to figure out how to make a living.” As a full-time bicycle messenger, he realized that supporting a family with two kids would be difficult. He sold the company in 2000; in expanded form—including trucks and a large warehouse—the locally-owned company continues to this day.

“I still ride bikes with the owner,” Sarver says.

He briefly returned to school, enrolling at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, hoping to earn an MBA. “It was horrible,” he says, with a laugh. “I dropped out. I’m an entrepreneur, but I couldn’t stand business school. It was not what I needed.” He says that business school was an example of him “trying to improve my weaknesses, which really only makes you weaken your strengths.” Lesson duly learned, he got into real estate.

After earning his real estate license in 2002, Sarver worked with his father as a consultant in the affordable housing arena for nonprofits. “That’s what my dad had been doing for years,” he says. In 2005 he launched Sarver Realty Group, “a really small, friends-and-family company.” Sarver describes his real estate company as “a sister company to ALFIE, because it gives us this great windshield; it taps us into the real estate market.”

In 2005 Sarver bought a property with wealth manager Rob Rikoon; he continued to do some real estate brokerage and affordable housing development. When his father retired in 2011, Sarver shut down the consulting business and went into real estate brokerage full-time.

He says that it was not long after that when Fowler started trying to get his business.

Sarver recalls, “I told Todd, ‘I’m not going to let you do my taxes, but I’ve got this partner; we have a little LLC. Why don’t you do those taxes?’”

“So that’s how I met Rob,” Fowler says. “He said to me, ‘I’ve been doing private lending to some people in Asheville. Will you collect the payments and make sure they have their taxes paid and their insurance and all that?’” Fowler said yes. That opportunity led to requests for more loan servicing; Sarver and Fowler worked together on those projects. “And then in 2015,” recalls Fowler, “we thought, ‘We could consolidate this whole thing into a business and put together some [money] to fund this capital.’”

Using words one might not expect to hear in the loan business, Sarver says that running ALFIE is “super fun. I love Asheville. I love being an entrepreneur and being creative. And ALFIE really gives us all that.

It’s a feel-good business because it’s very community-focused—and 16

| July 2019

TODD FOWLER

JON SARVER

Funded Entrepreneurs Following Business Sector 6 11

House Renovations

34 Funded Entrepreneurs Following Business SectorNew House Construction 4 Graph Information cour tesy of Alf ie Loans Commercial Office

in a strange way, patriotic—to be able to help people who have a great project. Because the system isn’t set up to serve them.”

Sarver says that ALFIE “is the perfect result of being highly focused on growing relationships.” Some of those relationships go back decades. “When our kids were babies, we were broke and looking for free housing so my wife could be a full-time mom while I was working,” Sarver says. The couple got a gig as dorm parents at Sarver’s alma mater in Swannanoa. “A lot of the students who were our dorm children are now business colleagues,” he says. “They’re local entrepreneurs, and we’re doing business with them.”

Though its focus is squarely on Western North Carolina and the South Carolina Upstate region, ALFIE’s roots extend to New Mexico. At its start, ALFIE was a pooling of investors brought together by Santa Fe-based Rikoon. He represented high net worth families all over the country. “The initial $3 million came from his family and his clients,” Sarver says. Fowler adds that Rikoon’s investor pool “gave us a chance to get ourselves proven; then we started talking to people locally about it.”

Today, Rikoon, a registered investment advisor, is the head of ALFIE’s advisory board. “Rob has a real affinity for direct investing for his clients,” Sarver says. “He really likes direct investment: things you can touch. And a lot of his clients really like community-based investment, stuff that they can feel good about.”

ALFIE Investors is the LLC of approximately 225 accredited investors—individuals and retirement accounts—and ALFIE Management LLC manages the accounts. “When our loan demand is high, which it currently is, and has been for the four years we’ve been in operation, we open up the fund to new investors,” Sarver says.

In addition to Rikoon, the advisory board includes Austin Tyler, director of Real Estate Management for Mission Health, and Bryan Smith, former VP-CIO for Volvo Construction Equipment; both are based in Asheville. The fourth member of the board is New York-based David Huberfield, a member of numerous boards in the United States and abroad. “We rely a lot on those people and their advice,” Sarver says. “And anyone else who we trust is smart. We surround ourselves with smart people.”

Looking back, Fowler concedes that the paths he and Sarver took to arrive at ALFIE Loans might look linear. He says while both of them had the talents this kind of work requires, “for a long time I didn’t know what would be the best use of those talents.” With ALFIE, he believes he’s found the answer.

ALFIE From The Borrower’s Point Of View Typical loans fall into one of five main categories: fix-and-flip rehab projects, speculative construction projects, multifamily housing units, commercial/retail/office property, and cash-out loans using real estate as equity. And the numbers reinforce the local focus; more than half of ALFIE loan origination comes

15 4

15

Retail

6 11

ALFIE Funded 17 13 Entrepreneurs Following Business Sector

34

Industrial House Land Renovations New OtherHouse Construction Commercial Office Retail Industrial Land Other

17

13

Assets by Region 4 14

Assets by Region

14

27

ALFIE Assets by 4 Region

34

Asheville City Other WNC Upstate SC 34

21

Buncombe County

Other SC Buncombe County Asheville City Other WNC

27

Upstate SC Other SC

by way of professional referrals, and more than 80% of assets are in Western North Carolina (the majority of those are in Buncombe County). 21

“Our philosophy on the borrower’s side is providing a streamlined source of financing that’s not at all predatory,” Sarver says. “It’s sensible.”

Loans from ALFIE range from a minimum of $500,000 to a top end of $5 million; lending limits vary within that range depending on the type of property being financed.

Collateralized by real estate, the loans are designed to provide bridge financing for purchases and/or refinancing; terms are relatively short: three to 24 months, with the possibility of renewal, and there’s a minimum interest payment period of July 2019 | capitalatplay.com

17

three months as well. Borrowers are required to come up with 10% of the sale price on their own, and the current lending rate is 11%. That’s more than a bank charges, but for many borrowers, the benefits more than offset the additional cost.

“And we’re a lot cheaper than giving a partner a 25% or 50% stake,” Fowler says.

“If you look at the cost of capital over a short term and the speed that we can produce and close a loan, it makes sense,” Sarver says. “And the proof is that we have all of these really experienced real estate entrepreneurs who keep coming back. It works for a certain type of real estate transaction.”

ALFIE only makes loans on investment property; borrowers and their immediate families are prohibited from living in the subject property.

Origination fees are minimal, in the range of 2% to 3%. The borrowing process also includes a title report plus property valuation by an ALFIE designee. “There are a lot of examples of things he finds that the average buyer new to investing and real estate might not uncover,” Fowler says.

The timeline from submission of completed paperwork to loan closing can be as little as one week; that’s far quicker than the processing time at most banks, according to Fowler.

“Our philosophy on the borrower’s side is providing a streamlined source of financing that’s not at all predatory,” Sarver says. “It’s sensible.” He underscores the point: “Many of our borrowers use our funds on a regular basis because of the speed and simplicity,” he says. “We’re in a private banking space, but our philosophy is based on people succeeding, not on people failing.”

Sarver says that at ALFIE Loans, it’s a point of pride that they’re not hard money lenders.

“That’s the more predatory side of private capital, where lenders are kind of intentionally setting up borrowers to fail so they can take their property,” he says.

In fact, Fowler says that it’s not at all uncommon for ALFIE to help borrowers avoid losing money.

“We talk people out of using us, sometimes,” Sarver admits. Moments before our conversation, he was with Fowler at a potential project site in North Asheville. “We were talking through stuff with a potential borrower, and we said, ‘Why don’t you borrow less money, structure it this way, do it slower, and phase it in?’”

If analysis shows that the expected margins will be very thin, they explain that to the borrower. “Sometimes we’ll look at a project and we’ll be very honest with them: ‘You can’t put 18

| July 2019

that amount of money into this [and then] sell it on the market and make any money.’” In such cases, ALFIE either turns down the loan request or offers substantially less money. In doing so, the firm “hopefully prevents [a potential borrower] from making a mistake.” Fowler says.

“And they thank us later,” Sarver adds.

“They’ll say, ‘I’m so glad I didn’t do that deal; after what you told me, we went and found one that actually works.’”

Fowler tells the story of a South Carolina borrower. “We had been working with him for over a year, and for one reason or another, the deals he brought weren’t great. He wasn’t going to make any money [with them]. Finally, we found the right one, and we financed it. He’s been dreaming of this for five years, and all of a sudden, he’s doing it. It’s the first house he ever bought himself to fix up and sell.

“And he just closed on his second one,” Fowler says. “He’s moving. And we’ve helped get him started.”

The Investor’s Perspective on ALFIE When Sarver and Fowler launched ALFIE, they had definite ideas about how to approach potential investors. “Initially, I thought our whole marketing pitch was the rate of return on investment,” Fowler admits. But he soon discovered that the recent recession meant that safety was a paramount concern. ALFIE’s careful and thorough (yet at the same time quick and streamlined) vetting process means that its investments fit that bill.

Fowler emphasizes that ALFIE investors can feel good about the uses to which their money is being applied. “You can’t put it into Exxon or McDonald’s and really know what’s being done with your money,” he says. Operating on a local and regional scale, ALFIE is different. Its community-based direct lending model means that there’s not the typical disconnect between investor and borrower. A significant portion of the funding comes from the very community in which it is lent. Potential investors in the pool “can go to the courthouse, pull up deeds of trust, and see that ALFIE lent money to a guy down the street.” And then they’ll realize, “Hey, they did a good job fixing that place up.”

Of course, they could ask Sarver and Fowler for that sort of information as well. Theirs is a

hands-on approach. “We take investors by and show them places all the time and explain to them, ‘This is where your money is,’” says Sarver.

Sarver says that ALFIE’s investor pool currently includes 225 private individuals and families. The minimum investment to join the pool is $50,000, and it’s open only to accredited investors. That designation refers to an investor with a net worth of at least $1 million, annual income of at least $200,000, and a few other requirements.

Sarver explains that the pool is shared. “If you bring $50,000 to the fund now, your $50,000 is in 140 loans,” he says. “It’s diversified within itself, and that mitigates the risk to the investors even more.”

Calling participation in ALFIE’s pool “a defensive investment,” Sarver summarizes his firm’s philosophy on the investor side: “It’s preservation of investor capital, and then a safe, reasonable return on it.”

Local Focus Means Local Expertise Sarver emphasizes the advantages—to both borrowers and investors—of ALFIE concentrating on the regional market. “We provide financing anywhere in North Carolina and in South Carolina,” he says, “but our focus areas are Western North Carolina and the Upstate.” And connections are important, too. “Not only do we know the real estate market, but we know a lot of the players in it, the professionals. We know who to call: the surveyors, the septic folks, appraisers, people who have been in real estate here for as long as I have, or longer.”

When the need arises for more capital, Fowler says that it’s mostly phone work. “We call investors and say, ‘We’re trying to raise another $1 million or another $2 million.’ It’s about trying to work referral angles.” He and Sarver are in the process of developing a more formalized and structured means of doing that. “We’re growing to the point where we need that better system,” Fowler admits.

“Our fund is open right now,” Sarver adds. “We’re in the process of a $3 to $5 million capital raise, so we’re inviting new accredited investors.” And there’s seemingly no end to worthy projects to finance with those funds. The small-scale, in-person nature of ALFIE loans means that Sarver and Fowler get to see both the potential and benefits of projects up close.

“We have such turnover in our loans,” Fowler says.

“They’re short-term; the average length of a loan is nine months. It’s just to help someone get from A to B.” But even among the hundreds of loans ALFIE July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 19

has made, some projects stick out. And they’re not necessarily the biggest or most high-profile ones.

“I remember a little loan that Jon and I did,” says Fowler.

“One of our first.” A client had a rental property that she was selling. “The lady who borrowed the money got sick and went in the hospital, so she got late on her payments, and she couldn’t take care of the house. Jon and I went over and we got the appliances out of it. We cleared tree limbs off of the roof and mowed the yard, so she could put it on the market.

“For me, that’s the high point of what we do,” he continues.

“To really put your hands on what’s going on in the world; that’s what’s really nice about what we do. Because I think it’s hard if you sit with a suit on and just manage money all day.”

“A lot of the loans are smaller ones that we do every week, every day, in and out,” Sarver says, “where there is a community-based entrepreneur. They live here, they raise their kids here. And seeing them succeed is really fulfilling.” The whole community sees some of ALFIE Loans’ projects; Sarver mentions one that is more visible.

“Having our name on the Beacham’s Curve project in West Asheville is another high point for us. The developers have

financing anywhere else. We lent money to fix it up, and now there’s a bar and a restaurant there that employ people.”

Eye on the Future In their four years with ALFIE Loans, Sarver and Fowler have found that some of their preconceived notions were wide of the mark. “One of the things that surprises me is how many people can use what we have to offer in any number of given situations,” Sarver says. “From a beginning real estate entrepreneur doing their first project up to very sophisticated career real estate investors. And I’ve been surprised about the different types of people on the investor side. We have local professionals, retirees, physicians, attorneys… all kinds of interesting people.”

Sarver and Fowler feel a strong sense of connectedness, and the accountability that comes with it. “We have been in this community for such a long time,” Sarver says. “So, from a business standpoint, we can’t do something that doesn’t feel good to us. It feels good on the investor side, because we have folks in the community who are making a nice return.” He notes that

“It’s an unusual business,” Sarver says, “because we do have two sides. We’ve got people who are benefiting who are accredited investors, and we have borrowers. There are not that many businesses that I know of where they have both sides.” intentionally created a project that’s in scale with the local community and the neighborhood. They’re local guys, local people; they understand.” Sarver points out that the developers “could’ve done a hotel or some kind of hideous thing, but they really did a nice job.” He says that the client is bankable and had other financing options but went with ALFIE. “They found that what we had to offer from a common sense, speed, and simplicity [perspective] just made sense. They could’ve gone another six months wrestling with a traditional bank.”

“They closed the loan, had foundations poured, and were putting up walls before they would’ve even been able to start closing on a loan at a bank,” Fowler says.

“We’ve had a number of loans that were real job creators,” Fowler says. He mentions an interim loan to a local company that had run into some cash management problems. With a bit of breathing room, company management was able to “right the ship,” protecting as many as 50 jobs, he says.

Sarver cites another project, an old, dilapidated building near Carrier Park in West Asheville. “The owner couldn’t get 20

| July 2019

for the last few quarters, ALFIE Investors have been realizing a 7.4% annual ROI. “And that’s all collateralized, first position, deed of trust,” he says. “We don’t do mezzanine financing or second position loans.”

“Ours are the least risky type of any loan,” adds Fowler.

Potential borrowers and projects go through formalized vetting (“It’s probably 80% objective,” Fowler says), but there’s still room for some subjective decision-making. “We try to make decisions based on common sense,” Fowler says.

“To protect our investors,” Sarver adds.

“And pricing it that way—by making our loans based on that criteria—we haven’t had to take but one property back so far.

That’s out of more than 400,” Fowler says, with a smile. “If we’re pricing it such that there’s meat on the bone, then that person can turn around, sell their property, and move on. Even if they make some mistakes. So, that’s our goal.”

Fowler makes it plain that he doesn’t care for the term microtrend (“Because it sounds stupid,” he says, with a laugh), but points out that hyperlocal market forces bear watching. He

mentions Oakley, a community adjacent to Asheville. “Right now, Oakley has 26 brand new houses on the market between $300,000 and $350,000. We’re responsible for some of those builds, but they’re kind of overbuilt in Oakley right now. We’re not going to loan money to someone building a $325,000 house in Oakley until that corrects.”

Conversely, he says that projects in Candler and Canton are on the rise. “A lot of people are buying and fixing up out there,” Fowler says. “It’s just where people are finding value.”

The long-term market for real estate is unknown, of course.

And that adds an inevitable element of uncertainty to the business in which ALFIE Loans does its transactions. “We definitely keep an eye out and talk every week about the real estate market,” Sarver says. “We’ve been in an up cycle for a long time; I don’t know if it’s the tail-end. That’s something we talk about, and we anticipate how things are going to look

when the real estate market adjusts. Which it will.” (Capital at Play’s annual real estate report, in our February 2019 issue, delved deeply into this.)

But he’s generally upbeat and convinced of the virtues of ALFIE’s business model. “It’s an unusual business,” Sarver says, “because we do have two sides. We’ve got people who are benefiting who are accredited investors, and we have borrowers.

There are not that many businesses that I know of where they have both sides, where you’ve got people whose money is going to work in their community and people who are using that money to better than own situation.”

Jon Sarver attempts to sum up ALFIE Loans in just a few words. “We are highly entrepreneurial, but we’re really community-focused. Every application that we receive is literally someone’s dream.

“And we’re a piece of the puzzle.”

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com

21

CAROLINA in the

WEST [

news briefs

Mountain Microgrid madison county

Having received approval from the North Carolina Utilities Commission, Duke Energy is moving forward with plans for a $30 million microgrid installation in Hot Springs. Consisting of a 2-megawatt solar facility and a 4-megawatt lithium battery storage facility, it will help provide uninterrupted power to the remote community’s 500 residents through sudden outages and peak-use periods. The pilot project is part of Duke’s ongoing efforts to modernize the regional grid; included in the price tag is a 9-megawatt lithium-ion battery installation in the Rock Hill community of Asheville. Duke continues winding down coal-fired operations at its Lake Julian plant, with a 560-megawatt, combined-cycle natural gas generator on-schedule to be fully operational in

]

January 2020. Duke already operates a 95-kilowatt-hour zinc-air battery and a 10-kilowatt solar installation in Mount Sterling in Haywood County and uses another microgrid for its research center in Mount Holly. Additional microgrid projects are planned for South Carolina.

Indoor Bike Park henderson county

The Riveter should open next winter.

It is the brainchild of founder Elizabeth Jackson and co-owner Eric MacLeod, MD. Jackson has a master’s degree in environmental management, and MacLeod is an orthopedic sports medicine specialist who has served as physician for the US Freestyle Kayak and Ski and Snowboard teams. Both share a passion for adventure sports and conservation. The Riveter will

be a 40,000-sq.-ft. facility adjacent to a 10-acre working farm. It will be the first establishment in the country to combine a climbing gym and bicycle park indoors.

Other indoor attractions include a yoga studio, a libation station, and a gear shop.

The outdoors will be groomed for various courses, including a perimeter cross-country trail around the farm. The owners say their main objective behind the business is to create a space where like-minded people can share community, as so many outdoor sports are often tackled in solitude or as fast-paced competition. David Knight, director of the state’s Outdoor Industry Recruitment Office, expects the Riveter to have significant economic impact.

Sounds Fun buncombe county

The Moogseum had its soft opening on May 23, what would have been Robert Moog’s 85th birthday. The Moogseum pays tribute to the life and contributions of the pioneer in electronic music—who, incidentally, was profiled here early on, in the January 2012 edition of Capital at Play. One of Moog’s children, Michelle Moog-Koussa, is the museum’s executive director. She said she wasn’t aware of how influential her father had been until

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48 the old north state

tributes started flowing in in his dying days. The Bob Moog Foundation had, since its inception, intended on creating a museum to carry on Moog’s legacy. The project received some funding from the Tourism Development Authority, but stalled with the economic downturn.

Then, last October, the project gained steam as the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center moved out of a building that was the right size and price and in the right location. Exhibits include a multimedia, interactive timeline of the inventor’s life, a biography of Léon Theremin, a giant circuit board that teaches how electricity becomes sound, a recreation of Moog’s workbench, and a 1960s synthesizer prototype. MoogKoussa said Moog’s archives have been preserved, but they were moldy and showing signs of small animal life after being stored in his country workshop five years.

people overcome opioid addiction. When the Boone center opened in 2002, it was the first such clinic in Watauga County, but as opioid addiction reached crisis levels, more and more clinics opened. The number of people seeking help from the Boone center had declined to 150 when McLeod’s board of directors made the decision to close it. Combined, McLeod’s other eight centers, all located in and around the Piedmont area, are seeing 3,000 patients. None of these centers are within a reasonable commute from Boone, so state authorities are working to make sure clientele experience no disruptions in treatment. For example, Stepping Stone of Boone committed to expanding hours and hiring more staff to take on an additional 100 patients, and Mountain Health Solutions of North Wilkesboro opened its doors to former McLeod clientele.

The Dealer Always Wins

Saving on Horse Power

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The Boone location of the McLeod Addictive Disease Center announced its intentions to close July 1. McLeod is a medication-assisted treatment center; in other words, it provides supervised methadone administrations to help

Appalachian State University (ASU) has partnered with Horse Helpers of the High Country (HHHC) in yet another endeavor. The nonprofit runs a farm for rehabilitating rescued horses and supports education and advocacy for horse

carolina in the west

health. Matthew Myers, a graduate of ASU who now owns Myers Solar Construction, donated $19,000 in labor to install a photovoltaic system on a barn for the horses. The electricity generated by the system will be used to power lights, fans, heating systems, and an electric fence surrounding two acres. Money saved will be used to buy feed, hay, and medical supplies for the animals. The installation was also supported by a $13,500 Energy Efficiency Grant from Appalachian and the Community Together, a service arm of ASU; plus, another $2,000 from the clean-energy activist group Transition Blue Ridge. ASU has partnered with HHHC for a decade, symbiotically sharing resources with professors and providing internship opportunities for students.

Current interns are participating in an investigation of equine abuse and developing best practices for managing a feral horse herd.

Zipping Through western north carolina

Having passed the House on a 70-46 vote, legislation regulating ziplines has been referred to the Committee on Rules and Operations in the Senate. Representative Ted Davis (R-New Hanover) is a primary

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 23

carolina in the west

sponsor of House Bill 380, nicknamed Sanders’ Law after his cousin who, in 2015, died after falling from a zipline and, although tethered, became tangled in another line. The bill would require operators of commercial aerial adventure courses to conform to one of four national standards. In addition, they would have to register with the state, pay permitting fees, wait for their application to be processed, and pass annual inspections.

The bill would further require daily equipment checks and reporting of any injuries involving the equipment that require more medical care than can be found in an off-the-shelf first-aid kit.

Operators found out of compliance would be subject to fees and possibly criminal charges. Representative Chuck McGrady (R-Hendersonville), who used to operate a summer camp, proposed removing language requiring the reporting of injuries. Having to report a twisted ankle could shut an operation down for weeks while the state investigates and makes a determination, a scenario he felt would negatively effect entrepreneurs.

Thinking Seamlessly wilkes county

Carolina West Wireless, a local telecommunications provider that serves Northwestern North Carolina, is gearing up for the transition to 5G. In an earlier announcement, CEO Slayton Stewart said the company planned to purchase end-to-end, 5G-ready hardware and services from Ericsson, a supplier with which Carolina West has a long history of doing business. Because the equipment is compatible with both 4G and 5G, Carolina West won’t have a disincentive for expanding to new areas or investing in improvements before transitioning.

The provider expects to phase-in 5G, changing each of its towers one at a time.

Decisions have not yet been made about which frequencies owned by Carolina West will be the first to transition. A new roaming agreement will also have to be signed for customers traveling out of 24

| July 2019

state. Sourcing of phones continues to be problematic for small wireless network operators because the heavyweight manufacturers earn enough profits off contracts with big-name, national carriers. Carolina West operates 30 towers serving 90,000 customers in 11 counties.

Patience Paid Off cherokee county

Ground was broken for the State Employees’ Credit Union (SECU) Hospice House of Western North Carolina in Franklin. While the state already has 38 inpatient hospices, this will be the only one west of Asheville. The building features six patient suites, which are projected to serve around 200 people a year. It also has accommodations for family members, including a kitchen, dining room, family room, children’s area, and chapel. Construction was made possible through two grants from the SECU Foundation to the Hospice House Foundation. A $40,000 grant paid for soft costs, including coming up with a financial plan for the project. Then, a $1 million challenge grant helped with construction costs. The building should be completed within a year. Hospice House Foundation formed in 2005 to fundraise for the construction and endowment of a hospice facility. The SECU Foundation supports high-impact housing, education, healthcare, and human services projects.

Funding comes from maintenance fees collected from customers and donations.

Getting the Whole Poop haywood county

Waynesville received a letter from the Junaluska Sanitary District (JSD) offering to purchase the town’s sewage plant. The offer was so outrageous, Mayor Gavin Brown didn’t know what to do with it, so he filed it. It was a follow-up inquiry a few months later that led him to believe an official response was in order. Waynesville’s sewage plant is aging and in need of $17

million in repairs. The plant has received so many notices of violation in recent years, the town has agreed to assign oversight to the North Carolina Division of Water Quality. JSD sends 250,000 gallons of sewage a day to Waynesville for treatment, and that accounts for only 6% of the sewage plant’s volume. Brown said JSD has neither the financial resources nor technical expertise needed to run the plant. The plant, however, sits within the boundaries of JSD, and, should JSD by whatever means purchase the plant, Waynesville could lose customers who currently can only access the plant via lines owned by JSD. Then, the move may only be a strategy to bring Waynesville to the table to discuss water rates. Waynesville is expected to raise rates about 50% to help fund upgrades.

Wake Forest on Board henderson county

AdventHealth Hendersonville and Wake Forest Baptist Health have signed a letter of intent to enter into exclusive negotiations that would allow physicians employed by Wake Forest to practice at AdventHealth. The agreement would give AdventHealth access to Wake Forest’s resources for research, clinical care, and preventive medicine. Formerly Park Ridge Health, AdventHealth has been serving the Hendersonville area for over 100 years. Its website lists 28 general areas of service, and the agreement would give patients seamless access to a wider range of specialists and treatments. Under separate contracts, Wake Forest already supplies AdventHealth with physicians for its emergency department, as well as a cancer services medical director with full access to Wake Forest’s latest research. If negotiations are successful, AdventHealth would remain the majority owner and operator of the hospital, and Wake Forest would hold an interest with representation on its board of directors.

The agreement is expected to be finalized in a few months, following due diligence and pending government and other regulatory approvals.

Risky Business polk county

A month after the incident, Columbus Fire and Rescue is still recovering from battling a fire at the American Zinc Products factory in Mooresboro. Several fire departments were called to assist as the building burned, with sulfuric acid emissions and 40-foot plumes of fire coming out of the roof. The Columbus department responded, sending seven firefighters, four of whom went inside the building for eight hours before being called out by Hazmat officials. It wasn’t until the team was back at the station, though, that they noticed their uniforms and gear were turning colors. Then, the threads in their gear started coming loose. Seven sets of personal protective equipment and gear have since been decommissioned for assessment of their suitability for salvaging and safe reuse.

The department estimates its losses at $17,000, but Chief Tony Priester says he’s more concerned about potential damage to his firefighters’ health and his department’s preparedness for continuing to protect the community.

Forest City Fire and Rescue was among other departments to report losses from the incident. It had to decommission its only ladder truck and all its equipment.

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Reviving the Art caldwell county

Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute President Dr. Mark Poarch officiated over ribbon-cutting ceremonies for the school’s new stateof-the-art furniture factory laboratory.

The lab will simulate a factory floor with modern equipment for upholstering, sewing, and cutting. The latter is made possible by Lectra Americas’ donation of one of its iX series cutting machines with Mosaic software for precision pattern-matching. The machine can cut intricate patterns through up to an inch of foam. Local furniture companies Bernhardt Furniture, McCreary

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Modern, and Fairchild Chair were in on the project from its inception, helping to lay out the lab factory and design curricula to train job-ready graduates.

School leadership and staff have found students often aren’t interested in pursuing a career in furniture making because they don’t know how high-tech the jobs can be. Edouard Macquin, president of Lectra Americas, said the industry is changing. Newer generations are preferring furniture that is custom-made with sophisticated equipment.

gradually branched into other growables, including flowers, fruits, and vegetables.

Her mission is to help address gaps in the supply chain, and her strategy is to experiment a lot. She’s been so successful, the Cherokee County agricultural extension agent reached out to her to see if she would be interested in training other farmers in high-tunnel planting and marketing. She now offers occasional workshops with a variety of collaborators.

with Beverly-Grant, which specializes in healthcare and commercial development.

Construction should start in 2021, and at full buildout the development will have 210 independent home sites. Amenities, which promote wellness and take advantage of the natural beauty, include scenic views, walking trails, and a fishing lake.

Assisted living services include 24-7 security, a physician-staffed wellness center, and certified nursing care.

Maintaining a Legacy

A Good Resource

Success with Intention

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Christina Newhouse estimates there are now 100 high tunnel farmers in the area, many of whom were her students.

She wasn’t a farmer before hearing about the National Resources Conservation Service’s High Tunnel Initiative in 2013.

The government program provided financial assistance for the structures, Thelook like plastic Quonset huts. which They work likearage greenhouses that use only passive solar heating, and they cover plants growing in the ground instead of uthority in pots. Newhouse found the prospects of subsidized startup to Excepand extended ces Incosts tio al Places ing Spa nsform Traseasons growing appealing. So,nshe started growing organic ginger and turmeric and TM

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paces Into Exceptio ming S n al Places Transfor

Legacy at Mills River is now accepting RJ Young has opened its first office in pre-construction reservation deposits.

Asheville. The Nashville-based company The 112-acre, amenity-rich luxury develwith 30 other locations is a provider of opment is a continuing care retirement office services and products. The company community; what makes it different is can set up customized computers and residents own their own homes. People networks and provide remote-access IT buying into the community can cusmanagement services like data migration tom-select the furnishings and fixtures between computers, email encryption, for their LEED-certified homes, with 24-7 technical support, data backup prices starting at The $407,000. Using the locally and to the cloud, and systems “Equity Model,” homeowners will be able security. It also offers workflow manto improve and sell or pass the homes agement services, including developing on to family members when they transisystems to deliver electronic documents tion to the skilled nursing and memory securely to the appropriate people at the care facility on campus. David Ammons, appropriate stages of a process. RJ Young uthority CEO of Retirement Living Associates, is also has a printing service, for making TM es Into Except invitations, c a serving as developmentmand operations trade show displays, business p S g ion al Places sfor in n a r T manager for the project. He is partnering forms, customized swag, and practically

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any other printed request. Since printing in-house can sometimes be more cost-effective, RJ Young has a catalog of over 500 printers and can help customers select the best fit for their contexts. At the grand opening, the company showed off its Ricoh touchscreen whiteboards and Mimaki wide-format printers, letting attendees experiment hands-on.

More Music transylvania county

Brevard Music Center has broken ground for the new Parker Concert Hall, which should be completed by June 2020.

It is the first major construction on the campus’ 181 acres since the WhittingtonPfohl Auditorium was built in 1964.

Designers at Platt Architecture worked to conform to the rustic feel provided by other buildings and capitalize on spectacular views, particularly Lake Milner’s.

The state-of-the-art, $6 million venue will be open year-round and feature acoustic programming like chamber music, piano and classical guitar performances, and jazz. It will also be rented out as an event space for weddings and conferences, offering catering and banquet services.

Another standout feature is its retractable system that makes setup and teardown easy when transitioning from a 400-seat

theater to a banquet hall for up to 250.

Drs. Tom and Joanne Parker were the lead sponsors of the fundraising drive.

and raspberries. Obermiller’s opened in 1980 and now enjoys the business of a third generation of repeat customers.

Building Back as Able

Explore our Town

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Obermiller’s Strawberry Farm has opened for the season, and over 30 families stopped by the U-pick fields the first day. Henderson County’s strawberry season typically opens the first week in May and continues through the first week in June. With over 1,000 acres typically harvested, North Carolina is the nation’s fourth-largest producer of strawberries; but unlike Florida and California, most of the state’s strawberries are sold locally, at farm stands, small markets, and U-picks.

This year, the Obermillers only planted about half as many strawberry plants as usual because last year, the farm was only open for about five days when the field was flooded with 22” of rain in four days.

Plantings closer to the creek remained inaccessible for the duration of the season. Now, to build back scale, owner JD Obermiller’s strategy is to turn small profits gradually on smaller investments.

He’s also diversifying. Beginning in 2013, the farm added blueberries, which ripen in July and August, to its U-pick plantings; and this year, it is adding blackberries

Explore Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau has released a new platform for ExploreAsheville.com.

Now, WelcomeToAVL.com uses a tilebased interface to connect users with restaurants, breweries, attractions, tours, hiking, shopping, and entertainment.

After winnowing inquires through a couple layers of subcategories, the site returns suggestions ranked according to popularity, which is determined by data the bureau has collected on visitor web use and frequently-asked questions. As an added bonus, homepage links put users one click away from real-time parking availability and the ExploreAsheville.com calendar of events. Any business related to tourism may be listed for free, and navigating the site is free. The platform was designed to inform tourists’ decisions by putting visitors who have already arrived in touch with all the area has to offer. The bureau expects the tool to be used directly by visitors as well as go-to people in the industry, like tour guides, front-desk clerks, and concierges.

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column

Articles of Innovation:

Robbing Our Own Cradle For sustainably-minded businesses, there are myriad solutions that will bridge us from a cradle-to-grave culture to one of a closed, cradle-to-grave goods market—and a thriving biosphere.

G gillie roberts

is owner of downtown Asheville sustainable lifestyle store Ware.

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I

NSTEAD OF MOVING ON TO A WHOLLY separate subject matter from my previous column on biomimicry in business (Capital at Play, May 2019, “Biomimicry as a Cure”), I’ d like to dive deeper. More specifically, I’ d like to talk about a system of material production called “cradle-to-cradle.”

The term was defined by Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, an architect and a chemist respectively, in their aptly named 2002 book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. I’ll explain their industrial proposal and give a nod to a few North Carolina businesses who are already moving in the right direction.

In preparation for their book, McDonough and Braungart took a critical look at the way we make things and pointed out the many flaws with the cradle-to-grave supply chains that we have come to rely on. “Cradle-to-grave” refers to the timeline on which a product goes from its creation from raw materials to its final disposal. This kind of linear process involves very clear inputs and outputs.

| July 2019

Supply chains are siloed. Unquantified waste is the ultimate end product, but not the fabricators’ consideration. With biomimicry in mind, this program is far from natural.

However, Western economies are currently so invested in cradle-to-grave systems that we go so far as to plan obsolescence into our products. Because, in this approach, a failed product usually means a new purchase. What’s good for business is good for GDP and ultimately good for the country at large.

McDonough and Braungart point out the irony that, in using GDP as the measurement for quality of life, we are agreeing that natural disasters, hospital visits, and oil spills are positive contributions insofar as they are all coupled with economic exchanges.

G Wrap your mind around that for a minute.

We have this industrial infrastructure that extracts materials from the natural biomes, turns them into short-lived products, and then contains them in landfills for the imaginable future. In some cases, trash and “recycling” are sold to foreign countries where they are heavily processed and turned into a lesser quality product (more on that later) or, more often, burned in homes or facilities as fuel. In fact, the book mentions that humans are the only species who take from the soil without ever returning nutrients in a usable form. Not even our dead bodies feed the Earth anymore (although, according to recent media reports, Washington is now apparently poised to become the first state to legalize so-called “human composting”).

McDonough and Braungart’s antidote to current fabrication systems is a

for recycling that does happen in and by this country is incredibly complex, and it varies drastically from one municipality to the next. You probably understand the general premise: Products and packaging of reclaimable materials are collected by cities and counties, a facility sorts the materials by type (glass, paper, plastic, aluminum, etc.) and compacts the bundles. Then they are sold to companies (largely in China and India) who turn the composite into new product or burn it for fuel.

From a sustainability perspective, this process misses the mark at every step. First on the list is that most items we want to recycle aren’t conveniently recyclable in the first place because they aren’t made of any one material.

Soda cans are lined with plastic, paper cartons are also plastic-laden, bottles have paper or plastic film labels that no one removes—materials must be fully

IF YOUR CITY DOESN’ T REQUIRE YOU TO SEPAR ATE GLASS... YOU CAN ASSUME THAT MOST OF THE STUFF YOU PUT TO THE CURB GOES IN WITH THE TR ASH. cradle-to-cradle system which avoids waste by designing it out of the process altogether. In a nod to biology, cradleto-cradle is a circular process whereby the “output” of one system feeds another; in their words, “waste equals food.” They call this circular system the “technosphere,” as opposed to its natural counterpart, the biosphere.

In more specific terms, the idea is closed loop manufacturing that uses only materials that can be used and reused to produce the same quality product continually.

You might be thinking, “Isn’t that what we’re doing by recycling?” I told you I’d get back to that. The answer is, “No.” Not in the United States, anyway. And not in most countries. Even the sad excuse

separate in order to be used. Did grease get on the paper pizza box? It has to go in the trash. The plastic ring left on the neck of the milk jug is a different type of plastic than the bottle.

Which leads me to the subject of lids.

You’ve probably been told to toss the lid and recycle the bottle. This is not because the lids are made of a substance that cannot be recycled, but because our compacting machines aren’t meant to process small pieces, and they literally jam up the works. If your city doesn’t require you to separate glass from other recyclable materials, you can assume that most of the stuff you put to the curb goes in with the trash. This is because broken glass imbeds itself in paper and plastic, making those pieces July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 29

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no longer safe or possible to process. Many areas of metro Atlanta, for example, have stopped collecting glass altogether, even though it’s one of the most cleanly recyclable materials humans are working with. What a conundrum!

Considering the above, it makes sense that the authors of Cradle to Cradle sought a better solution. Those are merely a fraction of the fallacies in the recycling theory, and all before the product even leaves your neighborhood. Skipping forward several stages in the process, you’ve likely heard that China, our biggest customer, by no small percentage, is no longer buying recyclables from the United States. While this is potentially catastrophic for waste management facilities and landfills that are already overflowing around the country, what better impetus for innovation than a country overflowing with singleuse plastic bottles? Luckily, there are already companies taking matters in their own hands, even in our corner of the country.

There is a growing community of resourceful businesses who are mining the deep caches of plastic bottles around the world and utilizing rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate—what most plastic bottles are made of) for textile production. Mount Inspiration and Recover Brands are two such enterprises with Ashevillian roots, making teeshirts and activewear with rPET and rPET/organic cotton blends. Recover, in particular, does a great job of keeping their supply chain transparent, displaying CAPJan19

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on their website how their textiles, from the recycled cotton to the plastic bottles, are sourced and spun in the Carolinas.

As you might have guess, McDonough and Braungart don’t shed a particularly positive light on this approach to waste reduction.

THE BOT TOM LINE IS, EVEN IF HUMANITY SWITCHED TO A PERFECTLY CLOSED CIRCULAR INDUSTRY TOMORROW MORNING, WE WOULD STILL BE LEF T WITH BILLIONS OF PLASTIC BOT TLES TO CONTEND WITH. They remind us that, as opposed to true recycling, the approach is more accurately called downcycling. This means the second generation of product made from the resources is in some way inferior (usually quality and durability) to the previous product.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that one concerning way rPET textiles are considered lesser than their

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first-generation materials is that they shed microplastics, releasing unquantifiable amounts of petrochemicals into waterways and ultimately the organisms that consume water.

I won’t downplay this significant hazard; I don’t think we understand yet how deeply this is affecting biological systems at every level of the food chain, and it’s already scaring people.

However, early solutions are rarely perfect. We’re finding ways to collect microplastics in washing machines, faucets, and factories. Better solutions are always underway.

In fact, one such solution has just been released. As long as people have been publicly concerned about microplastics, I’ve been jokingly offering to split profits with the person who will engineer a filter that can be retrofitted onto household washing machines to catch all solid material that passes, no matter how small. As of June 7th, it exists! Girlfriend Collective, a directto-consumer women’s athletic wear line with a cult following, that is made entirely of rPET, just released The Microfiber Filter—for only $45. I’ll be consulting my patent lawyer, but in the meantime, give them a Google. This is huge.

The bottom line is, even if humanity switched to a perfectly closed circular industry tomorrow morning, we would still be left with billions of plastic bottles (among other material waste) to contend with. Because of this, these brands have a long way to go before they’re at risk of running out of material. As long

as companies like Recover, Mount Inspiration, and Girlfriend Collective remain agile enough to adapt, and I would argue that their existence alone supports the notion that they intend to be, these are the kinds of solutions that will bridge us from a cradle-to-grave culture to one of a closed, cradle-to-grave goods market and a thriving biosphere. Now, who can I pay to collect the microfibers from people’s washing machines and turn them into seat cushions or something?

In addition to this book and the associated organization that now provides cradle-to-cradle certification for products, I invite you to look into the MacArthur Foundation, in particular their education regarding, and work around, circular economies.

Watching Annie Leonard’s 2007 20-minute animation short The Story of Stuff (viewable at YouTube or Storyofstuff.org) is another great way to begin to wade into a more thorough understanding of the immense issue at hand.

The book I’ve been referencing was originally published some 17 years ago, meaning its research began long before. This information has been available for some time, but now that people are “feeling the heat” (maybe that joke is too on the nose for current circumstances), my hope is that solutions like those proposed in Cradle to Cradle will begin to enter boardroom and design room conversations.

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STOWAWAYS The growth of regional self-storage facilities – and our residents’ accompanying need for them - shows no sign of slowing.

written by bill kopp

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photos by anthony harden July 2019 | capitalatplay.com

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MORNINGSTAR STORAGE offers indoors and outside options.

t some point in one’s adult life, it’s likely that the need for self-storage will arise. Even Americans who aren’t hoarders seem to accumulate more “stuff”—to invoke late comedian George Carlin’s classic observations on the matter—than they have space for. And any number of situations can occur that require temporary—or even long-term—storage of possessions in an off-site, purpose-built facility.

Remarkably, a mere two generations ago, the concept of selfstorage hadn’t even been devised. Today, according to industry blog SpareFoot, there are nearly 50,000 storage facilities in the United States, representing total rentable storage space of 1.7 billion square feet.

Self-storage in Western North Carolina Self-storage facilities were virtually unknown in Western North Carolina in 1969. A gentleman named George Morosani had moved to the area the previous year, and eventually launched a business that specialized in providing off-site storage for other businesses. Western Carolina Warehousing Company soon became a successful enterprise in storing goods, and as his company established itself, Morosani learned of a similar concept aimed at the consumer market. He recalls that a friend “was quite insistent that I would think about this new thing that was coming around, particularly in Texas: self-storage or mini-storage, as it was known at the time.”

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Believing that the concept was a solid business idea, in 1975 Morosani purchased 1.68 acres of property on Sweeten Creek Road, a few miles south of downtown Asheville, and constructed a 2,000-sq.-ft. mini-storage facility, reportedly the first of its kind in the area. Morosani hired a man who moved his trailer onto the property, living on-site and serving as the facility’s manager.

There was no template for what Morosani was doing; he effectively made things up as he went along. But his instincts were good, and the business was successful. Meanwhile, other business owners across the country were also independently opening similar facilities, and soon enough, a fledgling trade organization, the Self-Storage Association (SSA), came into being. Morosani was a charter member, and today, the SSA describes itself as “the official trade organization and voice of the U.S. and international self-storage industry” and “the registered lobbying entity representing the industry’s 49,000 facilities before the U.S. Congress and federal departments and agencies.” The SSA maintains formal affiliations with 40 state-level organizations.

For local entrepreneurs venturing into this new kind of business, things got off to a slow start. Much of that was due to the fact that consumers didn’t know what was on offer. “You had to sell the concept: ‘What is it? Why would I purchase it?’” Morosani recalls, explaining that it took nearly ten years for him to reach peak profitability, but once the self-storage concept become widely known, new start-ups typically took a mere six months to become profitable.

TRUCKS FULL OF STUFF visit area storage facilities daily.

That first Sweeten Creek Road location remains in operation today, and Morosani would eventually open and operate numerous self-storage facilities under different names, such as Stowaway and George’s Stor-Mor, in the greater Asheville area.

Morosani emphasizes how, in the early days of the new business model, self-storage was “a very mom-and-pop type thing, People would go in their backyard, build a little building, and call it ‘mini storage.’ And then, over the years, people would start buying a second one or a third one.” This was all happening in the days before nationally franchised and/or large corporate-owned self-storage facilities dotted the North American landscape.

When Morosani cashed out of the self-storage business about five years ago, he sold ownership of 10 facilities in Asheville, plus two in Henderson County, to an out-of-state company.

“I kept pretty local here, and it was time to go ahead to sell them out,” he says. “We had the majority of the business in this market area, and it was [gratifying] for someone to realize that and capitalize on that.”

The relentless growth in our region keeps demand high.

Buncombe County’s population has grown from about 239,000 in 2010 to 257,000 in 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available from the United States Census Bureau.

That represents an approximate 7.5% jump in just seven years. For that same period, population within the Asheville city limits grew even more, from about 83,500 to just short of 92,000, a 10% increase.

The Changing Nature of Self-Storage Thanks both to demand and to the relative simplicity of running these types of facilities, self-storage units spread like wildfire in the later years of the 20th century. “In the old days,” A SMALLER UNIT at GoStoreIt.

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Heated and/or air-conditioned units didn’t come about widely until around 1990. That type of storage facility quickly grew in popularity.

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24-HOUR VIDEO monitoring guarantees safety.

says Morosani, “it was something that could be run out of your home or your backyard.” He notes that business hours were relatively easy, with any given facility only open until five or six PM: “You knocked on a door, and the person who lived on premises would show the space to you.”

Round-the-clock access was rarely offered, and by today’s standards, security was minimal. The on-premises manager would keep the facility under lock and key, and the entire complex was often (but not always) fenced. Today, it’s common practice for a self-storage facility to offer 24-hour video monitoring and/ or secure gated entry to the complex. Additionally, an alarm system connected to local law enforcement is a selling point for many facilities. “We have 24/7 camera surveillance here,” says Andy Nelson, of AAA Storage World in West Asheville. “The Asheville Police Department has a code so they can come and go; periodically, they drive through at night. We’re very secure.”

Back in the mid ‘70s when entrepreneurs like George Morosani were getting into the storage business, there was no such thing as a climate-controlled storage space for consumer use: A typical rental could be likened to an unheated/ unpowered garage. Heated and/or air-conditioned units didn’t come about widely until around 1990, but that type of storage facility quickly grew in popularity, and operators across the country followed the demand. Morosani, for example, says he eventually converted about one-third of his 675,000 square footage of self-storage to climate-controlled.

Wendy Messer, manager for Morningstar Storage, located just south of Asheville in Arden, agrees, noting that about half of the rental units at her facility are currently climate controlled.

Recession-proof?

From an owner’s point of view, the self-storage business generally represents a good return on investment, one that successfully weathers the inevitable ups and downs of the economy. Some observers even regard self-storage as a cash cow, although Morosani points out that profitability tends to track with the national, regional, and local economy overall, noting that occupancy rates dipped around the time of the 2007-09 Great Recession. “But then 2012, ’13, and ‘14 came along,” he recalls, “[and] we got to almost 100% capacity.” That post-recession boom, though, signaled to him that it was time to move on, as the cap rates (ratio of net operating income to property asset value) for real estate investment at the time were low—too low, in his opinion.

NIMBY? Well, Maybe …

Relevant zoning and other municipal regulations figure into any commercial venture. And Morosani observes that, by definition, cities are generally more restrictive than counties.

Specific to Asheville, he notes that the city “has become very July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 37

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restrictive on a lot of the rules. And politically, a lot of people don’t want things to happen in their backyard. So, it’s easier to get permitted and to construct in the county than it is in the city. But ultimately, you do build in the city. Because that’s where the people are.” And perhaps surprisingly, few owners or managers of self-storage facilities report significant community opposition to building new units. According to an April 2017 news item in Asheville weekly newspaper Mountain Xpress, Pulliam Properties, a developer active in the local market, sought to build a self-storage facility with a retail component on Gerber Road in South Asheville, between Hendersonville Road and Sweeten Creek Road. The developer reached out to the local community and scheduled a town hall, inviting the South Asheville Resident & Business Community Organization and the wider community.

Apparently, any concerns were addressed in advance of the city taking the issue under consideration. At a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that June, several community members—including residents and staff of nearby Givens Gerber Park—voiced their support for the project, described in Asheville city government minutes as “a three-story, 85,000-sq.-ft. self-storage facility.” The minutes also noted: “No communication has been received from the public as of the writing of this report.”

“The commission voted unanimously to recommend that City Council approve the conditional rezoning request,” Kari Barrows reported for the paper.

“It’s true of any commercial-type activity that a lot of people do not want any change in their backyard,” Morosani admits.

“And that does happen.” But he says that by and large, he and other developers typically sidestep such issues by building in less controversial areas. “Usually, self-storage normally goes in places that are commercially viable. We go to places with lesser value, like industrial parks.” He says that the facilities he owned were generally on—or within sight of—four- or five-lane highways. “So, we didn’t necessarily have a conflict with neighbors.”

Occasionally, a site chosen for a storage facility turns out to have problems of its own. One of Morosani’s climate-controlled properties near the Asheville Municipal Golf Course and across from the Swannanoa River, for example, flooded during a pair of so-called “once in a lifetime” floods a week apart in 2004. That self-storage facility was one of many businesses to sustain water damage; the editor of this magazine, in fact, was one of the facility’s clients at the time, and he reports that roughly a third of his unit’s contents were so waterlogged as to be unsalvageable. Once the flood subsided, the property was upgraded to protect against future flooding. “We put up July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 39

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a five-foot berm and reinforced the concrete walls on the outside of the berm,” Morosani says, and even though there has been even more flooding in that area along the Swannanoa, he says that he hasn’t “heard of any problems since then.”

Small Business, Big Boys’ Toys Also important in choosing a location is its practicality for customers. New self-storage units are often built in proximity to apartment complexes. Those apartments can typically be only 1000 to 1500 square feet in size and lacking large closets or extra on-site storage space.

It follows, then, that a significant segment of the selfstorage customer base includes apartment dwellers. A few

The housing squeeze and rising costs overall have made selfstorage the go-to option for many consumers with more physical possessions than their homes can accommodate. apartment complexes might offer limited self-storage on their property, but more likely is an arrangement between apartment management and a nearby self-storage facility whereby renters are offered a discount.

The housing squeeze and rising costs overall have made self-storage the go-to option for many consumers with more physical possessions than their homes can accommodate.

But people whose apartments can’t contain all of their belongings aren’t the only ones turning to self-storage units; you’ll also find facilities in more rural areas. And sometimes a storage unit can serve as a means to bridge the gap between someone working in their home and having to move to an office elsewhere; small business inventory is a common and growing segment of the self-storage customer base, with mom-and-pop operations basing their distribution from facilities.

Other times, storage units are a place to store recreational items that simply don’t have a place in the home. “Some people—men, particularly—use them as ‘man caves,’” Morosani observes. A storage space can be “a place where they can do their hobby, whatever it may be.” He adds that at one of the facilities he formerly owned, one designed 40

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STORAGE UNITS come in all shapes and sizes.

RENTERS OFTEN underestimate how long they will need their units.

to accommodate especially large items like RVs, a group of students rented a unit: “As a high school project, two or three of them assembled an experimental airplane in there. I don’t think there are any real rules [governing self-storage units] that say that you can’t perform your hobby.”

Incidentally, parking a recreational vehicle in a covered or enclosed structure on the grounds of a security gate-controlled facility can often make economic sense for its owner. It may be cheaper to protect that investment—an RV can cost a quartermillion dollars or more nowadays—by putting it into a storage facility than it is to repaint a faded vehicle every three years.

Who Rents, for How Long, and How Much?

The demographic of consumers renting self-storage space varies widely. Families moving to town sometimes store their belongings until it’s time to move into their new home. “Our business is about 70 percent relocation folks,” says Andy Nelson, manager of AAA Storage World on Sardis Road in West Asheville.

George Morosani recalls that in his day, rental activity didn’t seem to fluctuate during the year; it was fairly consistent yearround. But apparently that’s not the case everywhere: At the

Riverside Drive Go Store It, located mere blocks from the campus of UNC-Asheville, the facility gets a lot of student customers. “They go on summer break and store their stuff here,” says facility manager Elizabeth Belshaw.

Musicians represent a chunk of the self-storage market; bands store their instruments and sound reinforcement gear between shows or while not on tour. And some self-storage facilities—primarily ones located out of earshot of residential areas—permit bands to use their rental spaces for rehearsals, too. “We have a mariachi band here,” says Morningstar Storage’s Messer. “They play here on a particular night, and other customers will come in and listen to them. We’ve had other bands through the years, too.”

The Go Store It self-storage spaces don’t offer electrical power, so they don’t have musicians practicing in their units.

“We do have people call and ask about it, though,” says Belshaw. And because AAA Storage World’s facility is located near residential areas, “it’s not allowed because of noise ordinances,” says Nelson.

Like other managers, Belshaw says that her business sees all different types of customers, from businesses that store overage or documents to people who have lost their parents and don’t have time to go through inherited property. Some July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 41

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TODAY, MANY OFFER boxes, tape, and any other storage needs.

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of the latter customers “store [for] upwards of five, ten years,” she says.

Most people find their storage needs to be shorterterm – “three to six months on average,” says Nelson—but they often underestimate. According to Belshaw, “Almost 50 percent of the people come in and say, ‘We’re just going to need it for a month,’ and then they’re here for six months.” But some do rent for just a month, right? “That pretty much doesn’t ever happen,” she says, with a chuckle.

Some of those short-term rentals come about because of the current hot housing market. “They put their house on the market, and two days later, it’s sold,” Belshaw says. “So, they have to move all their stuff out right away. I’ve run into a couple of those just this week.”

An informal survey of self-storage facilities in and around Asheville finds that there’s no real cost advantage to the consumer in committing to a long-term rental; most facilities charge a month-to-month rate. Several facilities do lock in that rate for the life of the rental, so if the base price goes up, existing customers don’t have to shoulder the increase.

When the self-storage industry began, there was rarely a retail component to the facilities. Today, many offer boxes, secure locks, bubble wrap, tape, and related packing supplies for sale. Some provide dollies, hand trucks, and mattress carts for use during load-in and -out at no cost. Morningstar provides new customers with a 16-foot box truck with a lift gate as part of every rental. A few, including Bee Safe Storage on Hendersonville Road in South Asheville, have labor available for hire, according to manager Olivia Elliott.

While competition keeps prices for getting too expensive, high demand means that rental rates for selfstorage units in and around the Asheville vary. Many of the local companies offer seasonal and/or special sale rates.

Bee Safe’s standard charges are anywhere from $84 a month (for a climate-controlled 5x5 unit) to $296 a month for a ground-floor-access, 10x30 space with climate control. AAA Storage World provides a 5x5 unit with climate control for $50 per month; a 5x10 without heating and cooling starts at $75. The largest units at AAA are 10x30; with temperature control, those units rent for $275 monthly.

Morningstar rents a climate-controlled 5x5 unit for $72 a month and up; a drive-up 20x20 space starts at $389 monthly, and a limited number of parking spaces are available for $69 per month and up, depending on vehicle size. Go Store It’s units start at about $75 a month for the smallest size (5x5), with large, inside units measuring 10x20 and featuring climate control renting for about $245 a month.

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AAA'S LARGEST units.

Storage no-no’s According to most state and municipal codes, self-storage units are not to be used as retail offices. “You can’t bring customers to the units,” Morosani says.

Owners and management are subject to regulations as well.

“Legislators have made a very concerted effort to make [selfstorage] an industry in which there is a definite path of how you collect money, what you can and cannot do,” Morosani explains, adding that much of that legislation came about through associations such as the SSA working with legislative bodies to craft rules that are fair for everyone. “If you operate according to those rules and don’t trip over them,” he says, “it’s pretty smooth. It’s a pretty mature business model at this point.”

An unfortunate truth of the self-storage business is that customer nonpayment and abandonment of storage contents is a common occurrence. In those cases, the facility owners are guided by state regulations as to how they can proceed. Go Store It’s Belsaw explains the process.

“You have to wait a certain amount of days” after nonpayment, she says. “We reach out to [the customer] every day; we’d rather 44

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them have their stuff and us have our money, obviously.” When those efforts are exhausted, “we cut the lock, open up the unit, and take pictures.” The photos are posted on the online auction site Storage Treasures, a solution many self-storage companies use. An auction runs for five or seven days, during which time interested parties can place bids starting at $10. At the conclusion, the winner has 48 hours to show up in person with $100 cash for a cleaning deposit. Once the unit is empty and clean, the deposit is returned.

There’s no bidding on specific items, though. As Belshaw explains, “when we cut the lock, until it sells, it’s not ours. I can’t put my hands past the threshold of a unit.” The photos show only what can be seen from standing outside the unit looking in. After the photos are taken, “we lock it back up and tag it,” she says.

Looking back on his decades in the business, Morosani says, “We had almost monthly auctions.” Morningstar, however, in business for 21 years, is an outlier here. Messer says that the company rarely has to change the locks on a unit. “We would rather just work it out with them rather than auction anybody’s stuff,” she says. Olivia Elliott, manager at Bee Safe Storage on

Hendersonville Road, says that at the new facility she runs, property seizure and auction is “not very common.”

Morosani says that instances of taking a renter to court are fairly rare; none of the facility managers interviewed for this story mentioned court proceedings at all. Instead, most owners focus on keeping up with collections so the situation doesn’t get serious enough to warrant legal action.

The authorities are called when it’s discovered that someone is living in their self-storage unit. “That’s a big no-no,” says Messer, noting that it has never happened at Morningstar.

“That’s against state law,” AAA’s Nelson emphasizes. Belshaw says the same is true for her Go Store It facility, but that at some of the company’s other locations in the Asheville market, “We’ve had to call the cops to get people to leave.”

Storage horror stories Belshaw recalls a somewhat shocking tale she heard from a colleague. (“Not a Go Store It,” she hastens to add.) A customer rented a space and then quit making the required monthly payments. Eventually, after repeated attempts to reach the July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 45

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customer failed, management cut the locks and opened the unit. “It was filled with Bose stereo equipment boxes,” she says.

Photos were taken and the contents were auctioned online.

When the winning bidder—who had paid $5000—opened the boxes, they were all empty.

Belshaw details what she thinks happened: In the case of the proceeds from a unit’s auction, the storage facility takes only what is owed them; the rest is returned to the customer who abandoned the contents. “That person who defaulted, he knew what he was doing,” she says. It’s likely that defaulting, losing the “property,” and getting a tidy sum after the auction was what the scammer was planning on from the very beginning.

Fortunately, such stories aren’t commonplace. But managers of self-storage facilities do get the odd request now and then.

“Somebody did call and ask me if they could store a casket,” says Morningstar’s Messer. She told the man that would be fine “as long as there’s nobody in it.”

What’s in store(age) for the future?

Even though George Morosani isn’t in the self-storage business himself any longer, as a developer he makes a point

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of following the marketplace. He notes that since he sold his facilities, he’s seen “four or five different companies putting in units” in and around Asheville. “Some might say that they’ve overbuilt,” he says. But he emphasizes that in 2019, self-storage facilities “are still a hot item.”

The days of mom-and-pop self-storage are largely over, though. “I’m sure there are still some small ones around that operate in their rural or niche areas,” Morosani says. “But most of them are larger concerns that have been consolidated into several large companies.” Since Morosani sold his properties, that’s definitely the case in the Asheville market.

Whereas most of the earliest self-storage facilities were simply a cluster of garages built onto a flat piece of property, that model has been essentially abandoned in favor of a vertical configuration. “The tendency is to stack them up,” Morosani says, “because you don’t involve as much land.” That approach is especially applicable when one gets closer to urban areas.

A new and growing trend is for self-storage facilities to go one better on the climate control angle, offering wine storage.

Wine collectors and enthusiasts are a growing segment of the self-storage business for companies like Bee Safe, a brand of the CubeSmart self-storage company. Select locations, including

the relatively recent Hendersonville Road facility, offer wine storage in temperature-controlled units ranging in size from five square feet to 10x30.

Self-storage facilities do seem to be experiencing a boom in the region. According to figures cited in a 2017

Considered along with the other selfstorage facilities locally, that may seem like an awful lot of storage space.

But clearly, the demand does exist.

Asheville Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, there were 19 facilities locally, with eight new applications in the 24 months prior to the meeting. Several have broken ground and/or opened since that time. A facility near I-240 on Asheville’s east side is typical of the facilities

being constructed; its original owners paid $750,000 for the land alone, according to a June 1, 2016 story by John Boyle in the Asheville Citizen-Times. That same story cited total estimated cost for construction at $6.5 million. Three years later, the SpareFoot.com industry news and information blog noted the facility’s sale to the Prime Storage chain in March 2019, noting that the Bleachery Boulevard facility “features 734 units in 77,510 rentable square feet.”

Considered along with the other self-storage facilities locally, that may seem like an awful lot of storage space.

But clearly, the demand does exist. The aforementioned SpareFoot.com—a site whose editors pride themselves on keeping up with trends in the self-storage business— notes that as of March 2019, there exists 5.4 square feet of storage space for every man, woman, and child in the United States. As long as Americans keep accumulating stuff, the self-storage industry will be there providing somewhere to put it all.

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THE OLD

NORTH car sponsor, and a founding partner for Daytona USA. Hurley liked how themes of comeback and competition would resonate for both Circuit City and his team.

At the age of 21, Hurley cashed out of his former business to launch a diversified investment powerhouse. Two years later, his team has invested millions in “some of the most revolutionary startups.”

to realize $1.1 billion in annual sales. It employs 3,100 globally in 17 manufacturing and 15 research and development facilities. Prior to the deal Parker, with headquarters in Cleveland, employed 58,000 while doing $14.5 billion in business last year. Lord will be integrated into Parker’s Engineered Materials Group, which alone was responsible for 84% of the company’s revenue. Following the acquisition, which should be completed in four to six months, Parker hopes to be in a better position to advance lighter-weight products with more advanced and environmentally-sensitive electronics. From a business angle, Parker will be realizing efficiencies and expansion in its supply chain, manufacturing processes, administration, and marketing and distribution.

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Venture capitalist Matt Hurley has announced the formation of H2 Motorsports. The race team will support driver Shane Lee in a No. 28 Toyota Supra for the NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS).

Lee competed in 13 NXS races in 2018, with finishes in fourth, sixth, and ninth place. He likely would have done better were it not for a crash, a tire blowout, and a depleted fuel tank. He also competed in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series and the ARCA Menards Series. Pete Rondeau, former director of Furniture Row Racing, the 2017 NASCAR Cup champions, has agreed to be crew chief; and Circuit City will be the car’s primary sponsor. In the 1990s, Circuit City was both the official electronics and appliance store for NASCAR, a primary

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Pending regulatory approval, Lord Corp will be purchased by Parker Hannifin for $3,675,000. Lord, a privately-owned manufacturer of chemical adhesives and coatings for the aerospace, defense, and automotive industries, is headquartered in Cary. It was founded in 1924 and grew

Julie Bryce had the idea for starting Bull City Miniature Golf and Bar after she and her husband, Ben Owens, played minigolf at Peter Pan in Austin. Two years later, they hosted their grand opening.

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a mix of indoor and outdoor holes. Bryce and Owens wanted to feature local landmarks in the design of each hole, and they reached out to the local community for ideas, ultimately receiving 50 responses.

Ideas came from middle schoolers, Duke University medical students, and working artists, among others. Seven of the ideas were put to use, and each hole displays a placard giving due credit. In addition to minigolf, Bull City Mini has kids’ activities and a splash play fountain.

The facility, which will only be open in warmer months, has an ABC permit for adult beverages and serves snacks and fun drinks for kids. The current site is described as a pop-up trial to gauge interest before investing in a permanent setting with an 18-to-27-hole course.

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Vidant Medical Center has proposed a compromise plan for an ongoing spat.

Language in the budget proposed by the North Carolina General Assembly would cost the medical center $35 million a year. Vidant is the teaching hospital for the East Carolina University (ECU) Brody School of Medicine, which is specifically and exclusively named

the old north state

in the budget as no longer eligible for Medicaid reimbursements. If approved, Vidant would be reimbursed the same as private hospitals, which is problematic because, as a teaching hospital, Vidant sees a disproportionate number of Medicaid patients. Furthermore, the $35 million the budget would cut would compound a $38 million loss the hospital would already incur from changes to the state Medicaid program. The language at first appeared retaliatory. The hospital is owned by Pitt County and operated by UNC-Chapel Hill (UNC). Until recently, the county had appointed 11 members to the hospital’s board; UNC, nine. That changed in April, when the county commissioners decided Vidant would fill the seats UNC had controlled. UNC and ECU responded by suing the county and Vidant, and the parties went into mediation. More recently, news station WITN released documents indicating the maneuvers could be motivated by UNC’s interest in taking over the health system.

downtown cleanliness survey put out by the city. Downtown businesses have been rolling their trash carts to the curb twice, six days a week and once on Sunday, obstructing foot traffic, disturbing the aesthetics, and smelling foul. To address this, the Transportation Department decided to pilot a program that has been used for years with success in some European cities. It has planted six semi-underground garbage containers from the Finnish company Molok. The containers hold the equivalent of 20 rollout carts, and they’re framed in stainless steel with lids that provide a good seal while being easy to lift and set. Inside is a double-layer, polypropylene bag with a resealable bottom that is opened for unloading into a truck. To empty the bins, the city will use a trash truck with a knuckleboom arm fitted with a hook. The containers and equipment were purchased by the city’s Sustainability Fund, and artists from Raleigh Arts were commissioned to decorate the receptacles.

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Developer Roy Carroll has announced his intentions to build a $140 million hotel complex. What he is calling Carroll

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South of Ballpark will be near First National Bank Field and another development Carroll just opened, a Hyatt Place Hotel.

The new development will feature an Aloft hotel, adding 150 lodging accommodations to the 110 provided in the Hyatt. It will also add 280 luxury apartments to the 289 at the Hyatt, as well as a 20-story office tower and 13,000 square feet of meeting space. Construction should begin in late 2020 after the city completes a parking deck. Carroll South of Ballpark will wrap around the deck, saving the city costs of bringing the exterior up to aesthetic codes. Already, there are five hotels within a half mile of the stadium. City leaders aren’t concerned about proliferation, though, as the business community continues to express high demand for more meeting spaces with overnight accommodations for attendees.

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In anticipation of growing demand, Cree is ramping up production of silicon carbide with a $1 billion expansion in Durham. Of the total, $900 million will be split evenly between converting an existing facility and refurbishing its equipment for wafer production, and converting another facility into a materials mega factory. The remainder will address miscellaneous expenses incurred with expansion. The investment will support Cree’s Wolfspeed operations, which produce gallium nitride-on-silicon carbide semiconductors for radio-frequency applications. Cree was founded in 1987 to capitalize on the discovery of a method of synthetically producing the material, a naturally-occurring compound that is rare, but which enables the creation of smaller, higher-efficiency semiconductors with better endurance in high voltages and temperatures. Cree also uses the material in its light-emitting diodes. Currently, demand is outstripping supply for electric cars, charging stations, and other applications in the telecommunications, aerospace, and military industries. The expansion represents Cree’s largest investment in advancing the technology. Construction should be completed by 2024.

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Kontoor Brands has officially spun off from VF Corporation and will now operate as a fully-independent, publicly-traded company. Kontoor is taking charge of VF’s denim brands, including Wrangler and Lee, both of which have been in circulation for over 200 years. It will own VF Outlets as well. Kontoor will maintain its headquarters in Greensboro, while VF moves jobs from North Carolina as it concentrates its other brands and administrative staff in Denver. The idea to consolidate was based on good results from a similar move in Switzerland, combined with difficulties recruiting top talent into California’s high cost of living. VF is

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focusing on its core, active and outdoor brands, which include the “big three”: Vans, The North Face, and Timberland. In a note to investors, Sam Poser of Susquehanna Financial Group described VF as “one of the best-managed, operationally-efficient, and highest-growth companies in our coverage universe;” but added, “the spinoff of its slow-growth jeanswear business will further enhance its growth profile” and “solidify turnarounds.”

With the spinoff, VF stockholders received one share of Kontoor for every seven shares of VF owned.

Light Rail Cuts Losses raleigh

The Durham-Orange Light Rail project was abandoned before construction began, and it is now estimated the defunct project will have cost state taxpayers over $158 million. The board of trustees of GoTriangle, the local transit organization overseeing the project, pulled the plug at the end of March, having failed to reach a goal for private matching funds that would have released $190 million in state funding. Over five years, the project had spent $130 million on administration, consultants, planning and design, and compliance with federal guidelines. Now, it is expected another $28 million will go toward winding the project down. Expenses will include paying for rent, staff, consultants, and five active lawsuits. John Tallmadge, the project’s interim director, is unapologetic, however. He said the voters and elected officials had deemed the project critical infrastructure; the investment in soft costs was required for GoTriangle to secure the $1.2 billion federal grant it was seeking. Unfortunately, the project folded before November, when grant funds would have become available.

Pruning While Blooming morrisville

Lenovo is expected to lay off about 500 workers. Triangle news outlet WRAL received a tip that 200 of those positions would be cut from the company’s Data Center Group in the area, but no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification report has been filed, meaning fewer than 50 employees should be laid off from a single facility. Corporate spokesperson Ashley Kusowski, however, succinctly responded to an inquiry, saying, “We don’t break out numbers by office location, business unit, or function.” The cuts came after Lenovo reported a return to profitability with revenues of $51 billion last year, up 12.5% year over year. Founded in China in 1984, Lenovo is best known for its electronics products. The Data Center Group sprang from the company’s 2014 acquisitions of IBM’s former x86 server business and Motorola’s version of the smartphone. With headquarters in Morrisville and Beijing, Lenovo will still employ 5,000 in the United States and 57,000 globally.

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column

Pair Like A Pro A quick guide to make any dining experience memorable.

J

M

john kerr

is the co-owner of Metro Wines located on Charlotte Street in downtown Asheville.

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OST

PE O P L E

towards one or possibly two wines no matter what the occasion. It’s great to find something you like. And it makes life a bit easier to simply order your favorite wine at a restaurant no matter what the entrée.

Drink what you like has always been my motto.

But you might be missing a great adventure sticking to the one wine you love. Entire cuisines have been built around the grapes and style of wines made in that country. You’re missing part of that culture’s culinary experience if you’re not serving wines which influenced centuries of effort to create complementary recipes.

If adventure is what you’re looking for, learn a little about pairing wine with food. With this knowledge, you’ll have the tool kit to select a great wine every time. There are plenty of books out there that will get you up to speed. But who has the time? A timechallenged friend of mine was frustrated with the volume of knowledge he found in books. He asked if there were a few guidelines that would get him 90 percent of the way there.

This is my response to his request. These are the principles behind pairing so that you understand the reasoning behind the professionals’

| July 2019

G R AV I TAT E

recommendations. Gain a working knowledge of the five criteria of tannin, acid, intensity, chile heat, and flavor, and you’re good to go. And don’t be surprised to find out that the wine’s flavors are not necessarily the most important criterion.

Tannins limit pairing options Pair tannic wines only with fatty foods like steak and aged cheese. Other pairings with tannic wine work poorly. The tannins cut through the fat and the fat softens the tannins, producing one of the best pairings out there. The less tannin a wine has, the more versatile it is in pairing.

The most tannic wines are Cabernet Sauvignon, Tannat, and Nebbiolo, the grape in Barolo. There’s also a bold, tannin monster of a grape called Sagrantino, if you’re looking for a Cab alternative.

Just remember to stay in this narrow lane for food to make any of these grapes shine.

J

We’ll(almost) Paint

Pair crisp / acidic wines with food that has some fat Crisp wines are usually white, but many European reds also have higher acid. The acid acts similarly to tannins in that they will cut through the fat of a meal, and the meal’s fat softens the acid. A sort of yin/yang effect.

Wines which seem to have too much acid on their own tend to taste better with a meal than sipped on your porch.

Higher acid wines are called food wines for this reason.

Foods with low fat can pair with higher acid wines like Sauvignon Blanc.

But you can also pair low fat food with lower acid wines like Chardonnay.

Do not pair exceedingly crisp wines with highly acidic food

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When both the food and wine are acidic, the whole dining experience becomes too sharp. Common examples of high acid foods are tomatoes and vinaigrette salad dressing. Pair low acid wines like Gavi or Chardonnay with higher acid foods.

Pair the intensity of the food and wine Match the intensity of the wine to the intensity of the meal. A delicate wine with grilled meats or a bowl of chili gets lost. A bold wine drowns out the flavors of a subtle meal. Pair subtle with subtle, bold with bold.

Pair chile heat with a slightly sweet wine The wine should be as sweet or sweeter than the meal. Wines with some sweetness pair with chile heat.

Sweetness and chile heat are common in Asian, Indian, and Middle East food.

During the meal, you don’t taste the wine’s sweetness, just the great pairing.

If you don’t want to serve wines with a little sweetness, the second best choice

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are wines with a perceived sweetness. Perceived sweetness comes from overripe fruit and low acid. A classic example is a ripe Zinfandel. However, get the lowest alcohol level possible since alcohol will increase the heat in chile hot-food.

Flavors It sounds counterintuitive, but this is the least important of the criteria. Combine flavor with the criteria above and you will achieve a perfect pairing.

Pairing flavors is like putting on a suit. If your suit has blue pin stripes, adding a blue tie will make the blue in both pop, and the whole outfit shine.

Pair to the flavor in the sauce or spices, and not to the meat or vegetables. If there are no seasonings except for salt, then pair to the flavor of the food. Note the food’s key flavor and find a wine with the same or similar flavor.

Other tips to get the most from wine Since we have a little bit more time, I’m throwing in a couple of tips to make your wine taste better. The good news is that these tips cost you nothing or very little.

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| July 2019

The ½ hour rule & how cellar temperature affects the rule Red wine should be put into the refrigerator ½ hour before serving and white wine removed from the refrigerator ½ hour before serving. If your cellar temperature is below 65 degrees, you’ll want to remove the red from the cellar 30 to 40 minutes before serving to hit the optimum temperature. You can decant the wine during this time if it needs it.

For reds, the goal is to bring its temperature to about 65 degrees. This damps down the flavor of the alcohol and makes the fruit pop. Don’t worry, the red does not taste chilled.

For whites, the goal is to warm up the white enough to enjoy the nuanced flavors hidden by the cold. Everyone has their balance of refreshment from cold and the nuance from warmth.

I personally wait only 20 minutes so that the white is a little colder than it would be from ½ hour.

The better the white, the warmer the wine The colder the white, the more refreshing it is. The warmer the white, the more flavor you’ll taste. The subtle favors of high

end whites will appear best when there is still a slight chill on the wine but warm enough to taste all. The range for the very best whites is roughly 48 to 55 degrees.

IF YOU HAVE A FAVORITE LIKE CABERNET SAUVIGNON, SPEND THE EXTR A MONEY TO GET THE GLASSES MADE JUST FOR CABERNET. THIS WILL GET YOU MA XIMUM ENJOYMENT FROM THE WINE YOU POUR THE MOST.

Decant for one hour before the meal Nearly all quality wines improve with air, including whites.

One hour is a good general rule to ensure that the wine is ready to drink or far enough along in opening up that you

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can enjoy it during the meal and taste the differences as it continues to open.

You don’t have to decant the whites. Just open them an hour before serving.

The younger a quality red is, the more air it needs. Thus, you will probably want to give reds that are at the beginning of the aging window more time, perhaps up to two hours and possibly more. You’ll figure it out when you open the first bottle of a particular wine. Reds at the end of their window need virtually no air.

Quality wine glasses do make a difference The shape and thinness of the glass make a surprising difference in the taste of your wine. It’s like spending an extra $10 or $20 on a bottle. Riedel is the best known brand. I avoid many of the other premium glass brands because they are thinner than Riedel and break too often.

I recommend buying the generic red and white Riedel glasses to use with nearly all your wines. But if you have a favorite like Cabernet Sauvignon, spend the extra money to get the glasses made just for Cabernet. This will get you maximum enjoyment from the wine you pour the most.

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leisure & libation

photo cour tesy Namaste in Nature

Om Outdoors Practicing Yoga Outdoors in Western North Carolina written by emily gl aser

The yoga industry is, with apt congruity, stretching.

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 57

leisure & libation

JUST AS YOGIS LENGTHEN THEIR

limbs—arms, legs, fingers, and toes—with an intentional groan of muscles, so is the yoga industry expanding to accommodate more practitioners, products, concepts, and classes. As of 2018, some 36 million Americans practice yoga; between 2012 and 2016 alone, the number of practitioners increased by 50%. For all its spirituality, it’s also an undeniably capitalistic enterprise, and a profitable one at that: We spend $16 billion on yoga classes, clothing, equipment, and accessories annually, with the average yogi dolling out some $90 monthly to deepen their practice.

For small business owners, those swelling statistics represent both opportunities for income and impact, as well as a stiff

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field of competition. To take advantage of the former while withstanding the latter, the breadth of available classes has expanded to almost Seussian proportions: Brewga, Broga, Doga, Glo-ga, Voga. Yoga with cannabis, cats, metal music, wine tastings, and even, ahem, sans clothes. The list of places and ways you can practice yoga with a group of like-minded yogis is interminable, but perhaps the most popular of these novel approaches is also the most authentic to the discipline: practicing outdoors.

“Practicing outside is very true to the roots of yoga and enhances your practice,” explains Miranda Peterson, owner and founder of the local yoga hike company Namaste in Nature. “For centuries yogis, hermits, and monks around the world have lived

an asheville wellness tour , photo by Lynne Har ty Photography

immersed or isolated in nature to deeply connect with their practice and purpose.” So are modern practitioners turning increasingly to the outdoors for classes on mountaintops and rivers, in parks and barns, where for $20 to $75, teachers guide them through a practice that connects them to both themselves and the earth.

Asheville represents a trifecta of optimal conditions for breeding such yogic businesses: a centuries-old reputation as a colony of health and wellness with a renowned yoga community; a utopia of breathtaking and wild scenery, host to adventure sports and outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds; and a booming tourist trade that combines the two. Wellness tourism is a $639 billion industry, and with 11.1 million visitors annually,

Buncombe County naturally gleans a correlative slice of the pie. But the outdoor yoga industry isn’t just for adventuresome visitors, it’s a pursuit perfectly positioned for locals too, where we can reconnect with our surroundings, bolster our health, and even give back to our community.

ON MOUNTAINS These mountains are a sanctuary of respite, beckoning hikers who climb their steep and winding trails to the top, through forests and over balds, in pursuit of both exercise and serenity.

Add to that the parallel benefits of yoga, and yoga hikes provide incentive for even intrepid athletes to say “om.”

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 59

a hike through the woods, is a great pre-workout.

leisure & libation

“Yoga and meditation combined with hiking creates a great mix of physical cardio, strength, balance, and flexibility, along with mental relaxation, reflection, and clarity,” says Namaste in Nature’s Peterson. “Not to mention, the smells and views are much better.”

A former art director for SapientNitro (now Publicis Sapient) and Whole Foods Market, Peterson completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training in Southern India and then taught a weekly class in Florida, but it wasn’t until she moved to Asheville that she considered capitalizing on her passion. “When I quit corporate life, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I only promised myself I would figure out what I loved doing and how to get paid for it,” she remembers. She combined her experience in creative graphic design, branding, and marketing with her love of hiking and yoga to found Namaste in Nature. “I started with some donation-based meetups and a few Eventbrite events in 2017 to test the concept before I invested in permits, liability insurance, a website, etcetera,” she explains. At the time, local outdoor yoga classes were limited to festivals, parks, and farms, and she became one of the first to gain permits and permission to use public lands with waterfall and mountain views. “In 2018,” she continues, “I met some fellow nature-loving yogis who were also interested in leading yoga hikes, so I started creating a team, and today we have a total of 10 yoga hiking guides.”

Those guides lead expeditions of up to three hours that begin at various trailheads an hour outside of Asheville. From there, the teachers-slash-guides steer students on a four-mile or less roundtrip hike which includes a short guided meditation near a waterfall or on a mountaintop, then they roll out their outdoor yoga mats (provided for free by Namaste in Nature) and flow through a 60-minute yoga class. For public groups, the experience is $59–$69 per person, for private groups $63–$75 per person.

It’s a concept familiar to Sue Ann Fisher, co-founder of Asheville Wellness Tours. The company began in 2016 as a walking tour of downtown Asheville’s holistic businesses, like, The Herbiary and Dobra Tea, punctuated by a quick yoga class in Pack Square Park. Fisher and co-founder Nicole Will quickly realized the potential of the enterprise’s evolution.

“We discovered that many tour participants were eager to hear a local’s perspective on what other ‘off the beaten path’ experiences might be available to them,” Fisher says. It was a realization that prompted the addition of custom itineraries and expanded tour offerings, including yoga hikes.

On Asheville Wellness Tours’ yoga hikes, soulful explorers take a two-mile roundtrip hike, the climax (literally) of which is an hour of yoga on a mountain summit; for extra adventure, customers can extend the hike with an additional mile of hiking and waterfall views. For $45 or $65, respectively, students will spend two to three hours reconnecting with nature. Those looking for a more private experience can book a private yoga hike for six or more, or $270 for smaller groups.

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mir anda peterson

photos cour tesy Namaste in Nature

warrior 2 on the mountain top

It’s the kind of dual-experience fare that’s proven appealing to tourists looking to catch two of Asheville’s defining offerings at once. Peterson estimates that some 95 percent of her customers are visitors, and that 90 percent of those are “women in transition, whether they are celebrating a milestone or taking some much-needed time for self-care.”

hand—and feet—at yoga. “Many people are intimidated to go to a gym or yoga studio or don’t make time for these activities until they are outside of their routines and comfort zones,” Peterson explains. They also represent a chance for experienced yogis to deepen their practice. “We feel that doing yoga outside allows for one to connect more fully with themselves and their surroundings,” says Fisher, who studied Classical Ashtanga Yoga and Karma Yoga for four years in British Columbia.

“Taking someone out of a studio and into nature to practice helps encourage them to connect with their natural rhythms and cycles.”

Though their business concepts differ— Peterson’s Namaste in Nature focuses solely on yoga hikes (she envisions retreats and an adult summer camp in the future), Ann’s Asheville Wellness Tours on a variety of customizable experiences outside of yoga—their intention is the same: to inspire a reconnection with self and with nature. “My favorite part of teaching yoga outside is seeing students shift their perspective,” Ann says. “On Yoga Hikes, we encourage participants to be focused on the journey, not the destination. When one really sinks into this idea, their entire yoga practice can change. I often witness our guests [leaving] their Yoga on the Mountain Hike with increased self-confidence.” Peterson says she has

“My favorite part of teaching yoga outside is seeing students shift their perspective.”

Fisher’s assessment of Asheville Wellness Tours’ audience aligns with Peterson’s; she notes that most of their customers are visiting the area for a girl’s getaway or bachelorette party, and that repeat visitors aren’t uncommon. “Most of our groups participate in more than one experience,” she adds. “For example, we might plan a day that starts with Yoga on the Mountain, followed by massage at their Airbnb or vacation rental, and end it with a food tour!”

Yoga hikes offer a number of unique advantages, and are oftentimes a timely opportunity for rookies to try their

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 61

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Lawn tickets start at $20 | July 2019

2-4

Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert, Roméo et Juliette, Patriotic Pops, Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto, Mendelssohn “Italian” Symphony, Brahms 4, Elgar Cello Concerto, Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, and Béla Fleck

Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 and Season Finale: Mahler 2 featuring Keith Lockhart, plus Stravinsky’s Firebird

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anna levesque doing SUP Yoga , photo cour tesy Anna Levesque/Mind Body Paddle

experienced similar awakenings in her students which mirror her own experiences stretching in both mind and body on mountaintops the world over, noting, “A simple yet meaningful yoga, hiking, and meditation experience can be the spark that ignites a lifelong practice of personal growth and contentment.”

ON WATER With a tangled web of languid rivers shepherded by the mighty French Broad, ours is a region naturally suited for standup paddle boarding (SUP). It’s the “standup” part that more and more people are abandoning in favor of the warriors, chairs, and planks of yoga.

Anna Levesque is the owner of Mind Body Paddle, a multifaceted enterprise offering empowerment and Ayurveda health coaching, kayaking classes, SUP camps/retreats in Asheville, Barbados, and the North Carolina coast, SUP and SUP yoga Teacher Trainings, and SUP tours—punctuated by SUP yoga—on the French Broad. Levesque’s long history of cultivating self-knowledge (she began meditating in high school) led her to yoga, which she initially used to offset long hours of paddling and regain mental focus, particularly when she was competing on the World Cup circuit for freestyle kayaking.

The impact of her personal practice inspired her to share yoga

he adstands are extra difficult on water, photo cour tesy Andrea Morris/Sol Flow Yoga

with others. “Yoga is key in helping outdoor athletes reduce the risk of injury and discomfort from repetitive motion,” she says. “I started teaching yoga to my kayaking clients on trips, and they were amazed at how good their bodies felt even after six days of paddling.”

Today, Levesque incorporates SUP yoga into her programming for both the obstacles and advantages such a practice brings.

“The extra challenge of having to balance on the board gives us insight on where we cheat on land,” she explains. “We become aware of how we weight our feet, or one side of the body more than the other. Yoga on the board challenges us to move more precisely toward optimal body alignment and balance because we can’t get away with our regular land-based habit patterns.”

And according to Levesque, shavasana—the relaxation pose that closes most practices—is doubly serene when accompanied by the trickle and touch of water.

Andrea Morris, of SUP yoga practice Sol Flow Yoga, has also found that yogis find new perspectives on the river. “Practicing outside often provides the space to express ourselves a little more authentically than in the classroom,” says the serial entrepreneur (her other endeavors have included a recycling business, wild crafting local herbs and remedies, and her current work as a licensed clinical social worker and addictions expert with her consulting company). Like Levesque, it was July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 63

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photo by Emily Nichols

the impact of her own practice that inspired Morris to take on teaching through Sol Flow Yoga, which she founded in 2016.

Today, she works with local Southern Raft Supply for boards and gear, an informal partnership that continues to evolve.

Morris and teacher Vanessa Caruso host three weekly SUP yoga classes (plus a SUP Bootcamp), each of which costs students $20 (plus $5 for a rental board, if you don’t have your own). If you’re looking for a lengthier excursion, Levesque’s SUP retreats range over two days and down miles of the French Broad through the River Arts District and Biltmore Estate. For $399, students experience two full days of SUP, including lunch, lessons, and yoga. For custom or private SUP yoga lessons or experiences, prospective paddlers can contact Levesque via Facebook.

Like yoga hikes, SUP yoga oftentimes serves as motive and muse for women in the midst of personal journeys. “My typical customers are women between the ages of 45 and 70 who want to re-ignite joy and adventure into their lives,” says Levesque.

“I offer programming that helps women remember who they are so that they can be even more effective and successful in all aspects of their lives.” While Levesque’s tours and range of programs appeal largely to visitors, Morris, on the other hand, taps into a more local base; she estimates some 95 percent of her customers are local, with a rising contingent of regular or repeat business. That’s thanks, in part, to the rise in popularity of river sports: Both Morris and Levesque note the increase of paddlers of all types on the French Broad these days.

Nervous to try chaturanga on the water? Don’t be. The only prerequisite is that students know how to swim. “I get asked so often, ‘What if I fall in?’ Well, you get wet!” Morris laughs. “Most participants don’t seem to know their own power or strength, balancing skills, etcetera, and feel more accomplished than they’d originally imagined after practice.” photo by Lynne Har ty Photography

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acroyoga on display at the Asheville Yoga Festival, photo by Emily Nichols

IN PARKS

“Teaching and practicing yoga outside, no matter where, offers boundless opportunity to be grateful for the chance to exist on this planet while moving mindfully with the breath...”

When you’re in the business of yoga, outdoor classes can scratch an itch outside of your daily lineup of classes and courses. Take, for example, Asheville Yoga Center’s Yoga in the Park series. “As host and organizer of the annual Yoga in the Park series, we are able to make yoga even more accessible to everyone in the community,” explains general manager Melissa Driver. “Yoga in the Park enables us to fulfill our mission through annual fundraising efforts to support local nonprofits.

Each class is free for participants; however, we collect donations in support of two area nonprofits each year.” Donations from this year’s series benefit local charities Homeward Bound and United Way. (Asheville Yoga Center was featured in the February 2018 issue of this magazine.)

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the asheville yoga festival offers something for everyone, photo by Emily Nichols

photo by Emily Nichols

The series—now in its 7th year—takes place on select Saturdays at 10AM on Reuter Terrace in Pack Square Park through August 31st. Benevolent yogis lay their mats in the sunshine of downtown Asheville for over an hour of practice.

“Teaching and practicing yoga outside, no matter where, offers boundless opportunity to be grateful for the chance to exist on this planet while moving mindfully with the breath, whether the birds are chirping or the busy sounds of downtown are in the background,” says instructor Forrest Campbell.

Even businesses far outside the realm of yoga are capitalizing on unique forms of outdoor practice to draw in new visitors.

Much like breweries regularly host indoor yoga classes, Franny’s Farm now offers Goat Yoga in the barn during winter’s kidding season (that’s when baby goats are born). Franny Tacy began offering the quirky classes in 2017. The public classes cost $20 and usually take place through the winter months, when the kids are still cuddly, into spring, when they get more curious in their play. Once the busy season starts (usually May through October), the classes are available privately for $300/group (Tacy points out it’s a favorite for on-site brides looking to quell their pre-wedding jitters).

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photo cour tesy Frances Tacy & Stephan Pruitt Photography

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Tacy estimates that the special sessions draw equal parts locals and tourists, but the reactions of practitioners can vary widely: Some choose to snuggle with the goat babes, while others laugh as the critters jump on their backs in tabletop or through their legs in a warrior position. Regardless of how you choose to spend the class, Tacy says it’s open to everyone: “All classes are for beginners and designed to increase laughter and flexibility in life and limbs.”

And then there’s the Asheville Yoga Festival. This year’s fest, which takes place July 25–28, will span locations throughout downtown Asheville and outside of it with 40 world-class presenters and more than 90 offerings, including music, activities, and yoga classes, many of which occur in the Mountain Air Market in Pack Square Park. “This part of the festival is open to the public and boasts over 70 health and wellness vendors, a slackline park with acroyoga, free community yoga classes taught by regional studio owners, a live music stage with over 20 sets throughout the weekend, and a self-care sanctuary with body work practitioners providing services all weekend,” says Sara LaStella, who took over the festival in 2016 with co-director Amanda Hale. The festival

of unwanted goods diverted from landfills

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photos cour tesy Namaste in Nature

also draws in other outdoor yoga vendors and includes SUP yoga classes with Anna Levesque and yoga waterfall hikes with Miranda Peterson.

The festival, which boasted some 1,500 ticketed attendees in 2018, draws visitors from all over the world (this year’s guests include yogis from Germany, Japan, and Curacao). Just 10 percent of ticketed attendees are from the area and only 25 percent from North Carolina, but overall attendance is steadily on the rise; LaStella notes a 25–50 percent year over year growth in new attendees since she and Hale took on the roles of co-directors. As the festival continues to grow, its intention remains the same: “To manifest a diverse yoga experience that welcomes everyone equally and to direct yoga’s arrow to compassionate activism,” she says. “Which basically means, we hope to make yoga accessible to everyone and to provide the space for attendees to explore their dreams and values on and off of the mat both during and after the festival.” Like the Yoga in the Park Series and Asheville Goat Yoga, the business is far 68

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bigger than its outdoor yoga practice, but the Asheville Yoga Festival’s outdoor yoga experiences and all of its programming serve, like the other businesses highlighted here, to reconnect self, nature, and community.

OUTDOOR YOGA AND YOU Whether you try outdoor yoga once or weekly, the potential benefits are multitudinous. Practicing yoga, regardless of location, can afford a lengthy list of boons: increased flexibility, muscle strength, and posture; protection for joints, bones, and spine; a boost for your immune, digestive, and nervous systems; inspiration for mental health and equanimity. Now marry those advantages with the correlative perks of spending time outside—stress reduction, lower blood pressure, alleviation of anxiety and depression, mitigation of inflammation—and you’ve got the perfect hobby.

yoga in the park ,

photo cour tesy Asheville Yoga Center

photo cour tesy Namaste in Nature

photo cour tesy Andrea Morris/Sol Flow Yoga

According to Namaste in Nature’s Peterson, combining hiking and yoga or meditation provides a unique combination of cardio, strength, flexibility, and balance that can provide a host of benefits, including those listed above, along with weight loss, improvement in memory, focus, sleep, creativity, and more. “My deepest and most impactful meditations have been outside while connected to the earth, fresh air, and water. You get the added benefits of being outside, like immune-boosting phytoncides from trees and plants, Vitamin D from the sun, and negatively charged electrons and negative ions from the earth and moving water, respectively,” adds Peterson.

Fisher of Asheville Wellness Tours points out the merits of practicing outside on a yogi’s nervous systems. “With constant notifications, bright cell phone lights, and the high stress reality of today’s world, our nervous systems barely have a chance to get out of fight-or-flight and into ‘rest-and-digest’ mode. Being in nature helps us to step out of our stress and into more ease. It is crucial to allow the nervous system to July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 69

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decompress in order to avoid illness and disease,” she says.

Such a practice can also, as she has witnessed, kickstart a practitioner’s self-confidence.

As a case for SUP yoga’s advantages, studies have found that the presence of water can increase the mental health

healing,” says Levesque, who also points out that SUP yoga can contribute to optimal body alignment and balance.

As for those goats, practicing with animals multiplies the relaxing aspects of yoga. “Research into animal therapy sug gests that animals can help humans increase their longevity and can even reduce symptoms of conditions that are brought on by stress,” points out Tacy.

“There are many mental benefits of practicing yoga with goats nearby, as the animals will lift your spirit, lessen any feelings of sadness or grief, and enhance communication. These mental benefits further enhance the outcome of your practice.”

When you participate in an outdoor yoga class around Asheville, you’re not just promoting your own health and wellness, you’re also benefiting our regional community. “A common principle embedded in the core of yoga life is that of ahimsa, meaning

When you participate in an outdoor yoga class around Asheville, you’re not just promoting your own health and wellness, you’re also benefiting our regional community. “A common principle embedded in the core of yoga life is that of ahimsa.” benefits of spending time outside. “In our busy and overstimulated lives, having the chance to lay on our backs, fingers dipped in the water, watching the clouds float by, and feeling a gentle breeze on our bodies is extremely CAPJABHALFjuly

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photo by Namaste in Nature

causing no harm of any kind, not only through actions, but through words and thoughts as well,” explains Asheville Yoga Center’s Driver. It’s this concept that inspires the Center to give back through their donation-based Yoga in the Park Series, and it’s also at the heart of many of the practices hosting outdoor yoga classes. Namaste in Nature donates part of the price of each yoga hike to plant trees via OneTreePlanted.org; Asheville Wellness Tours works with Conserving Carolina by hosting classes on their protected lands and donating a proceeds of the profits to the org; Sol Flow Yoga hosts an annual day of adventure on the lake for breast cancer survivors; and the Asheville Yoga Festival tries to make yoga available to all by providing scholarships, an equity pass for people of color, and a partnership with Light a Path, a local nonprofit that connects underserved communities with wellness practices. Help yourself, help others—these classes foster the ultimate win-win.

In the heat of summer and the heart of the Blue Ridge, seasoned yogis and newbies alike are finding serenity, strength, and social conscience on their mats. Substitute the studio with mother nature’s classroom this summer, and you’ll soak up more than just sunshine.

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Chardin Detrich and Ira Friedrichs, of Asheville’s Smart Feller Tree Works are

Going Out On A Limb written by arthur treff photos by evan anderson

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“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is, in the eyes of others, only a green thing that stands in the way.”

C

- William Blake

hardin Detrich was in his element.

Previous experiences as a rock climber and wild land fire fighter had prepared him well. Sunlight glinted off his signature blonde ponytail protruding from the orange helmet. He was ascending an enormous white oak, cutting off limbs and safely lowering them to his team mates. He loved being an arborist.

He was climbing this beautiful tree using the latest techniques, and from his harness hung fifteen pounds of gear, everything he could possibly need for the climb, including self-rescue and deep wound first aid.

It was a lovely day in the Virginia mountains.

Chardin was in his happy place: working outside, doing a deadly serious job at height, where safety is paramount. He was surrounded by the trees he loved, but he had a bad feeling, something wasn’t quite right.

The higher he climbed, the worse he felt.

Climbers don’t have x-ray vision; they cannot confirm whether a tree is structurally sound enough to support their weight. Sick trees leave clues for arborists to ponder before and during the climb.

This particular oak was perfectly proportioned, with a full canopy, and there were no telltale markings.

There was nothing visibly wrong with this tree; it was magnificent. Left alone, it might last another century or two. It was just growing in an inconvenient location. Chardin was at the very top and with one last pass of his chainsaw, he would be sending the remaining greenery to the ground. Then it happened.

He froze and felt the telltale tight throat. Tears suddenly erupted from a very deep place. He couldn’t finish this tree off, didn’t want to deliver the coup de grâce…but it was his job. Taking a ragged breath and closing his eyes, he asked the tree’s forgiveness.

Seconds later, a warm breeze swirled under his face shield—the tree was forgiving him.

It was the tipping point. Chardin vowed then and there to find a way to work as an arborist to help save trees, not just take them down; to put the environment before his personal financial gain.

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“Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves.”

- Tasneem Hameed

READY

SET

CLIMB

Ira Friedrichs loved being high off the ground. The accomplished rock climber from Lexington, Virginia, had spent a lot of time on mountainsides. With a rope securely anchored to a rock face, Ira could hang in his harness looking at tiny trees far below and be overwhelmed with the joy of living and the beauty of the natural world. Right now, I’m resting in a place that very few humans will ever see, he thought. I wish I could spend all my time up here.

Rock climbing is minute-by-minute problem solving in a quietly stressful-yet-beautiful environment; gravity never sleeps. It will instantly take over if a climber isn’t meticulously careful. Risk is kept in check by a climbing team’s technical knowledge, judgment and attitude, things that are constantly worked on by the team during each climb.

He enjoyed the easy camaraderie with fellow climbers, as well as the gear-geek technical aspects of the sport. Ascending a face was a collaborative effort that required something Asian philosophy calls beginner’s mind: a willingness to approach every challenge as if for the first time, and an ability to learn from anyone. The term resonated with Friedrichs because he was always open to learning.

Armed with broad experiences in mountaineering and teamwork, he achieved certification and worked for a while as an outdoor instructor at Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, out of Wheeler Bay, Maine.

Ira thoroughly enjoyed the instructor role and found it gratifying to pass knowledge along to his students.

Hungry for a different outdoor experience, he turned to another high-flying activity he’d participated in timber framing.

“Timber framing is mechanical problem solving,” says Ira, “but with a beautiful end product to show for it: a house.”

Timber framed homes are often assembled while working at height with the use of centuries-old rigging techniques. Like climbing, joining massive timbers into a structure is a three-dimensional problem where gravity can be unmerciful. It requires exacting skills, which attracts wonderfully unique and quirky people.

After Outward Bound, Ira followed the Timber Framers Guild up to Vermont where he signed up to work on a project. The complex build was being run by an experienced builder who specialized in traditional Japanese Timber Framing and he was eager to pass his knowledge on to Ira. July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 75

Beyond Timber Framing, they had a lot in common. The gent was also an accomplished rock-climbing guide and wilderness educator who possessed a lifetime’s experience in creating, implementing, and directing outdoor programs for at-risk youth.

Buddhists believe that a teacher appears when the student is ready, and Ira surely was. His project leader soon became a close friend then mentor, and Ira would spend the next eighteen months under his tutelage.

Not only did the trees need to be precisely joined, they also needed to be harvested from the home site. Ira’s rockclimbing skills became invaluable as he learned to perform the dangerous work under his mentor’s watchful eye. This is when the light went on for Friedrichs—he decided to become an arborist.

It would be a great way to make a living, Ira thought.

He’d be using his climbing gear and skills coupled with his environmental sensitivity to care for trees in a minimally invasive manner… and like climbing and timber framing, he’d be solving three dimensional puzzles at elevation, balancing adventure with safety and personal integrity.

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“Trees don’t bleed, don’t feel pain, and they damn sure don’t go to heaven. They’re just damned big weeds—cut ‘em down.”

- Respected Asheville Land Developer to the author The gentleman who made that statement years ago was only trying to be helpful. I was walking a piece of land we’d just purchased in North Asheville and cutting some brush to facilitate siting our new home. The developer was trying to help me maximize the view of the mountains. I owned the land, so I can cut them down, right? They’re my trees after all.

Days later, our architect suggested that we leave some trees in place. That way, we’d have a smaller, intimate view in the summer, and we could look forward to a seasonal change when the leaves dropped, revealing an expansive winter view. We took his advice.

We live in a different house now, very close to downtown Asheville. Climate change brought some severe storms to Western North Carolina over the winter and I saw two homes

CHARDIN DETRICH

in my neighborhood incur major structural damage after large trees fell on them. We have a gorgeous two-and-ahalf-foot diameter tulip tree growing very close to the house that has bark that looks rotted, causing my wife and I to fear a similar fate. This is a shame because we took great care during the building process to save as many trees as possible. I called Smart Feller Tree Works to give me an opinion and an estimate to take it down.

“Sounds hollow,” said I, tapping on the tree.

“Yeah. Tulips tend to sound that way,” replied Chardin.

“What about this bark aberration?”

“It’s hard to say, but this looks like an older injury that’s healing,” he observed. “Did any construction equipment hit this, or were any materials leaned up against it?”

“I was the general contractor on the job but I’m not sure…. that was ten years ago.”

“And this slope,” he continued, sweeping his hand along the grade uphill from the tree, “was this created by your grader or is this undisturbed soil or mulch?”

At this point, I’m wishing I had x-ray vision to know if the tree won’t fall on my house. The young man wearing forestry pants and helmet explained that I had options.

Smart Feller Tree Works uses a Resistograph that can read the strength of growth rings via tiny holes drilled around the circumference of a tree.

“We should also dig down to see if the soil is too deep around the uphill roots,” said Chardin.

“Can’t I just do that myself and call you back to look?” asked the penny pincher who looked just like me.

“Sure, but you can’t use anything metal, you’ll damage the roots before you see them,” was the reply.

“How do you guys do it, by hand?”

He laughed. “No, we use an air knife. It shoots concentrated compressed air that will allow us to dig a non-invasive trench to expose the root collar to gauge their depth and health.”

My wish was granted: This was close to x-ray vision!

The tests might reveal that the tree had problems and eventually need to come down, but they also might tell us that the tree could be saved, it would be worth the money to find out. What an experience! I decided I wanted to get to know this company more.

IRA FRIEDRICHS

Crossing Paths In 2010 Ira Friedrichs moved to Asheville and, armed with his climbing gear, a pickup truck, and a chainsaw, went into business for himself. Tree work, however, is seldom a one-person operation, so for larger jobs, Ira tapped into an informal collective of local arborist owner/ operators who could subcontract for each other.

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way to get Smart Feller Tree Works (SFTW) off the ground. The company slowly attracted customers who appreciated Ira’s noninvasive climbing techniques and his dedication to environmental impact — his focus was on saving trees, not cutting them down for convenience.

Ira’s girlfriend at the time met another woman at a clothing swap who had an arborist boyfriend who was thinking about moving to Asheville—it was Chardin.

“I knew that Chardin was a good arborist before he moved here through the things we discussed over emails,” recalls Ira. “There are things you just don’t do to trees if you care, like spiking up one to

Ira and Chardin still climb and are accompanied by five climber/arborists. prune it, or topping, or parking your truck on their roots. Chardin, too, had discovered Beginners Mind, and strived to remain open to learning from wherever it came.”

Chardin called his new one-man venture Green Earth Arborists, and he was welcomed into the local arborist collective alongside Royce’s Tree Service, Grizzly Bear Arbor Care, and Smart Feller. It wasn’t long before he and Ira had worked enough jobs together that their talk turned to consolidation, and in late 2013 it became official; Chardin and Ira were the co-owners of Smart Feller Tree Works.

Smart is Good Business Nine years later, SFTW has grown to seven full-time employees, plus the two owners. They have continued to show 32 percent average annual sales growth since 2012. Their balance sheet shows $300,000 in capital equipment including: three chip trucks, a dump trailer, a knuckle boom crane, two chippers, and a mini skid-steer loader.

Ira and Chardin still climb and are accompanied by five climber/ arborists. The full-time office manager (who was previously a member of the tree crew at nearby Warren Wilson College) keeps the schedule and communication going. The company also has a full-time shop manager with twenty years experience in arbor care who maintains all of the field equipment—the trucks, chippers, crane, and chainsaws.

Incidentally, the last two employees still climb trees and take part in company rescue training. Everyone needs to know how to rescue an injured arborist. Smart Feller’s payroll practices have landed them a Living Wage Certification, and, starting in 2017, all employees and their spouses received health insurance. In a small company, everyone wears many hats, so three senior level arborists share the customer job quoting role.

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How Humans Unknowingly Stress Trees Topping:

Trees cannot be trimmed like hedges; cutting off the canopy will eventually kill a tree. Topping removes all of the tree’s food, as well as opening up numerous live wounds that the tree will not be able to heal. It also causes the tree to let a proportional size of its root system die, since suddenly its crown size is drastically decreased, and it does not have the energy to keep the roots alive and also it does not need the original root system size to supply the new “canopy.” The sprouts that grow after a tree has been topped are also weakly joined and do not have the same structural integrity as regular limbs.

Spiking:

Arborist wearing spikes to ascend a tree damages live tissue and opens wounds that likely become infected from airborne pathogens or even pathogens present on the climber’s spikes.

Pruning for Convenience:

May upset the trees’ natural ability to balance its torque loads.

Most of the time a large (greater than four inches) pruning cut is unnecessary and causes major issues for the tree.

Root Damage:

When excavators tear roots, the biological response is much different and more stressful than if the root was cleanly cut.

Arborists armed with an Air Spade and very sharp hand tools can make surgical cuts that do not harm the roots.

Soil Problems

*Pesticides, herbicides, and man-made fertilizers. *Compaction: Roads, driveways, and parked vehicles compact the soil and keep water and natural nutrients from reaching the roots. *Lawns and ground covers change the soil pH and keep water from reaching the roots. *Driveways: Cause root death and soil pH change. There are new effective systems that can be installed without digging.

Note that with the exception of topping and spiking, there are things a certified, ecologically conscious arborist can do to help reduce some of the stress with specialized tools.

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SAFETY IS THE TOP concern for Smart Fellers.

Credentials There’s no formal process for becoming an arborist; education and certification is left to the discretion of the person holding the saw. Smart Feller encourages its climbers to become certified arborists by the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA). After documenting two years field experience, candidates take the ISA exam. With so much to learn about tree work, Ira and Chardin consider ISA certification to be a bare minimum.

For years the company has been working with the Tree Care Industry Association (TCIA) to become accredited. TCIA Accreditation is the only program of its kind in the tree care industry. It’s a voluntary process which evaluates businesses to ensure that professional practices and standards are met by all employees who work on a homeowner’s property.

When a homeowner hires an accredited tree care company, they can rest assured that this organization has been checked for proper insurance, applicable licenses, and reliable and ethical customer service practices, plus meets strict operating standards. A key objective for accreditation is to help companies provide the highest levels of service to homeowners.

TCIA estimates there to be about 20,000 tree care companies registered in the United States. Of that 20,000, about 2,500 are TCIA Members, and of that 2,500, about 280 are accredited. Make that 281— earlier this year, Smart Feller Tree Works became a TCIA Accredited company.

Is it Dangerous?

Tree work is a deadly serious business. With 139.5 fatal accidents per 100,000 workers per year, running chainsaws in trees vies for the dubious title of World’s Most Dangerous Job alongside commercial fishing and underwater welding.

Consequently, workers compensation insurance is expensive. When SFTW added their first full-time employee, the company didn’t have a track record, so their workers comp premium was 49 percent. That meant that for each dollar paid to the employee, the company had to pay forty-nine cents to the insurance company.

Over time, Smart Feller has maintained a flawless safety record, and passed every surprise inspection by the insurer; their premiums have shrunk to less than half of what they paid for their first hire. A large key to their safety record is dedication. Twice annually, the company undergoes rescue training: They practice rescuing a climber who is injured and cannot get himself down.

Smart Feller makes a practice of keeping their climbing gear in top condition, as well as acquiring any new pieces that can ease climber workload. On the job, whether a crew member is in the trees or on the ground, they are all linked by radio headsets in their helmets, similar to SWAT teams and military operators. This way, everyone can be talking quietly in real time, allowing them to function as a welloiled machine.

Safety Sit Down One thing that workers comp insurers love is Smart Feller’s weekly safety meetings, where the arborists assemble before the workday begins and review all the jobs performed since the last meeting.

Recently, I had the rare privilege of attending one such meeting.

I arrived at 7:30AM. The early morning sun washes across the fronts of chipper trucks in Smart Feller’s garage. One climber was placing a circle of plastic chairs in front of the trucks in the puddle of sunlight. In the shadows of the barn, the rest of the climbers checked their gear and loaded their trucks in preparation for the long day ahead. It was a picture of relaxed concentration, hands automatically snapping carabiners, checking ropes, and loading tools into trucks; everyone appeared to be talking at once.

Suddenly we were taking our seats. The atmosphere was friendly, relaxed. The crew was young, softspoken, and athletically thin. Clad in fluorescent company climbing shirts, forestry pants, and boots coated in a collage of mud and mulch, they laughed as they recounted some of the jobs, and became somber talking about others. I never heard any macho bravado or posturing. Their ethos was one of quiet respect for the potential danger of what they do every day. No prompting needed, someone would mention the job name and begin talking.

Every day, six climbers are sent out in three trucks to work smaller jobs in pairs, occasionally coming together to work on larger, more complex projects.

These meetings, then, are a vital opportunity for crews to learn from each other. It’s also a format for climbers to give the job-quoting team feedback about the complexity of the jobs he’s been estimating and the actual time they’ve been taking.

Arborist lingo flowed like the espresso we were all drinking, and I suddenly had no idea what they were talking about.

I saw that the cambium was being choked, so….

It was my first steel cable job!

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Next, we landed the pick….

That old Cobra was choking the tree, so…

Yeah, there was significant tip weight…

He lowered the butt down so I could grab it.

One crew talked about a loyal customer who was overly friendly, wanting to be involved, and became a safety risk by where he was standing. Other climbers chimed in with suggestions to keep it safe without alienating the customer.

Another talked about a rental property they were working where the tenant wasn’t told by the landlord that tree work was going to be performed on the property. One crew had to take limbs down in close proximity to expensive cars whose owners couldn’t be located to move them. The breadth of the subjects covered was surprising.

I also didn’t expect the extent of the men’s knowledge of tree varieties, their pathogens and diseases, as well as climbing techniques. One climber reported how he improvised a new way to loop a spare line over a nearby limb, winning some admiration from his peers.

When Ira took the floor to discuss a big job that he had led to take down an uprooting tree in a very congested area, the air became quietly taut. As he was describing his experience in the tree, he shared what was going through his mind in a quiet measured tone. It sounded scary. No one was whistling past the graveyard; the crew was honestly sifting through their collective mental and emotional experiences as a way to learn about safety and each other.

During a pause, an arborist who was on the ground that day said, “I’m glad you announced into your headset that you were seconds away from coming out of that tree because of your fear. It reminded me of the importance of communicating my fear, that no tree is worth getting hurt over, and it alerted us on the ground that things were getting hairy for you up there.”

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The Things They Carry 3

1. Removal gafts, allows climber to be attached to spars/trunk during removal 2. Work positioning lanyard 3. Mechanical ascent/ descent device 4. Top handle chainsaw 5. Helmet with visor, side protection, and bluetooth speakers/mic

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6. Chest harness, used to automatically advance climbing system during ascent 7. Hand saw. Sterilized after each day or use to prevent spread of pathogens 8. Rope wrench--allows for single rope technique ascent and descent 9. Saka--connects to one foot for ascension, allowing the climber to use their feet instead of hands

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10. Emergency blood stopper pack--includes a tourniquet and a large blood stopper bandage.

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 83

in my past, and I get great satisfaction that we’re teaching these young guys a craft where they can go anywhere in the world and make a good living.”

Chardin is quick to add that they would rather lose a bit of money on a job than berate a climber’s slow performance or decision-making. They preach not stressing trees, so why stress their climbers?

“I’m so grateful for the crew we have,” says Chardin. “We send our guys to strangers’ homes to perform dangerous work for money. Today, two crews are doing five separate jobs apiece. I’m proud of the fact that we don’t have to worry about them.”

Smart Feller work a four-day week, averaging between 40 and 50 hours a week, with fifty as the limit, because fatigue lowers safety. Friday is kept in reserve for emergencies or weather contingencies.

Hours for the owners on the other hand, can easily swell to 70/week. A typical day for Ira or Chardin is up at four for paperwork, on the job by 7AM, climb all day, then client quotes in the evening, followed by more paperwork after dinner. Being the owner of an arborist business can be rough on marriage and family.

A COUPLE OF Smart Fellers.

I’ve been around quite a few professionals who work in dangerous situations. The level of technical detail, professionalism, and communication I witnessed at the Smart Feller safety meeting was on par with naval aviators in a Top Gun instructor briefing I had the honor of attending.

Communication is King Impressed by everyone I’d met in the company, I ask the owners what they were doing to screen potential employees.

They explain they’ve been really lucky that applicants always seem to appear when they need someone. It would seem that SFTW has achieved a reputation in the arborist community of being an employer that puts climbers’ safety and professional development as a top priority, in addition to its commitment to save trees wherever possible.

When I ask what’s the minimum experience level they look for, Chardin says, “The number one skill we’re looking for is communication. If someone is a good communicator, and isn’t prone to making assumptions…”

“There’s the Beginners Mind thing again,” interjects Ira. “Absolutely,” says Chardin. “If a person doesn’t readily assume things, communicates really well, and has a good attitude, we can teach him climbing and arbor care.”

“I really enjoy guiding a climber to achieve a higher level of ability and safety,” says Ira. “I’ve had so many teachers 84

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Students Ready…

Another Teacher Appears A few years ago, a new arborist named TJ Dutton moved to the Asheville area. His company, Crown, Root & Soil, has years of soil work and arboricultural experience recreating healthy, thriving forest soil environments for urban trees—allowing trees a chance at a much longer life. The work resonated deeply with Smart Feller Tree Works; and, since moving here, TJ has been an integral part of SFTW’s progression toward having the knowledge, skills, and experience to preserve stressed trees.

Ira and Chardin are grateful for TJ’s mentorship. The three arborists hope that the combination of SFTW’s well-oiled organization and TJ’s preservation techniques will broaden Asheville residents’ awareness about trees in order to keep as many trees alive as possible.

Smart Feller performs a variety of services and, historically, removal of dead or compromised trees is 65 percent of gross revenue, with pruning at 15 percent and soil work, 15 percent.

Once a year they are asked to perform ecologically conscious lot-clearing prior to building.

The company wants to see those percentages shift five years from now. So, in addition to their partnership with TJ, they hired a fifth climber/arborist to free up Chardin to use his knowledge and passion for saving trees in order to educate the public that there are ways to help save trees rather than cutting them down.

If their public education plan works, Smart Feller anticipates that they’ll begin to see a shift in the distribution

Learn More Must-Reads about Trees The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

by Richard Preston Nonfictional account of the scientific/recreational climbers who explored the canopy of California’s coastal redwoods. Their climbing techniques and discoveries about the biology of old growth trees helped shaped the tools and techniques of modern Arbor care.

The Hidden Life of Trees—What They Feel, How They Communicate

by Peter Wohlleben International nonfiction bestseller that opens readers’ eyes to the amazing processes at work in forests every day. Told by a career forester backed by decades of scientific data. You’ll never look at trees the same way after reading.

The Overstory

by Richard Powers Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, New York Times Bestseller The unseen complex world of trees is spun into an expansive story that goes back and forth through history, outlining their struggle to live alongside humans.

Surf for Tree Education Visit these sites to get more information on ecologically removing trees. crownrootandsoil.com treesaregood.org/treeowner smar tfeller treeworks.com dir tdoctor.com

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 85

of their services toward more preservation work. Five years from now, they hope tree removal can be reduced to 33 percent of gross, with conscious pruning and soil work increasing, each contributing to 33 percent of revenue, respectively.

Education for All I spent a morning riding along with Chardin as he visited customers to quote new jobs. It turned out to be a cram course in conservation and preservation about the largest organisms on earth.

As we drove, he didn’t preach; he pointed out why some trees looked like they did, and it was usually the result of under-educated homeowners, builders, or arborists. Along the way, he told me about trees’ magnificent powers to adapt, to communicate with others of their species, and what a tree does when it realizes one of its limbs is dying.

More than once, he asked me to imagine a life without trees, which I couldn’t. I knew that they give off life sustaining oxygen, but Chardin gave me a pithier understanding.

In addition to the water and soil nutrients they need to thrive, trees remove carbon from the air by breaking down CO2, in the photosynthesis process. The carbon adds strength to their

growth rings. The waste humans and farm animals leave behind is toxic and needs to be kept away from drinking water. Trees, on the other hand, excrete oxygen, which we breathe. Pretty cool creatures, these trees.

I also learned that the average lifespan of an Eastern United States tree in the forest is 200-400 years, yet in a suburban setting that same tree lives only 60-75 years. Trees in places like Asheville are particularly vulnerable: As the human population swells, trees are removed to build homes, and those that remain are stressed by soil compaction and lack of proper nutrients, as well as root and pruning damage.

None of this is intentionally malevolent; it is lack of knowledge, complicated by the fact that trees won’t begin to show signs of stress for at least five years after they incur the damage. By then the house/addition/driveway are no longer new and all the tradespeople have moved on, so no one learns from the experience. The lads are centering their education on customers because they pay the contractors, the architects, and anyone working on their property.

I couldn’t help but notice that Chardin is perfect for his new role of educator.

We visited a customer who was breaking ground soon on a garage project, and he wanted advice about five evergreens that

Named Outstanding Chamber of the Year by

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www.ashevillechamber.org

were very close to where he wanted the garage to be. He was thrilled to learn that he could keep the trees if Smart Feller cut a trench with the Air Knife to make surgical cuts to the roots before an excavator cut the footing. One of his other trees had a blight that the company could treat annually.

Chardin also suggested that his company establish a tree protection zone with fencing to keep construction vehicles from damaging the trees in question.

As if on cue, within minutes a state road repair crew drove into his driveway and planted a mini track-hoe right next to the trees the homeowner wanted to save.

“The tree protection zone would prevent that,” said Chardin, pointing to the excavator.

“Tell him he has to move it.”

Watching Chardin interact w ith new customers was further proof that Smart Feller Tree Works is committed to customer edification. When clients feared branches that overhung cars or houses, he patiently explained why most of those branches were safe, and that cutting them might throw other parts of the tree into jeopardy. Throughout the morning rounds, he offered a range of alternative services to aid stressed trees.

*** I hope that Smart Feller and other concerned arborists are successful in educating enough customers, builders, and city officials to start a groundswell of awareness in favor of trees. The changes they propose to modern construction practices are not expensive or technical—they’re mostly common sense.

The changes they propose to modern construction practices are not expensive or technical—they’re mostly common sense.

Trees are amazing organisms, with an uncanny ability to adapt. So are humans. I hope that we can find a way to adapt our lives to accommodate them, because I cannot imagine a world without trees.

Celebrating 16 Years in business together!

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July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 87

People Play at

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1. Abby Wambach hosted the final Power of the Purse.

2. CFWNC President Elizabeth Brazas with Abby Wambach

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3. Lisbeth Riis Cooper & Cindy Davis Bryant 4. Abby Wambach & Kate Kledis taking a selfie.

5. Lezette Parks & Tara Scholtz 6. Abby Wambach's in-laws Dick & Patti Doyle

7. Julie Akers and Pam Lane with JC Schwab and Diana Torres-Edwards 8. Adrian Vassallo & Abby Wambach 9. Malaprops Bookstore & Cafe sold copies of

The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina’s 15th Annual Power of the PurseŽ Crowne Plaza Resort and Spa | Asheville, NC | May 21, 2019 Photos by Michael Oppenheim 8

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Abby Wambach's books.

10. Jacqueline Grant with Abby Wambach 11. Ryan Kelly, Meghann Burke, Stacey Enos, Abby Wambach, & Jimmy Wheeler

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12. Sponsors and Patrons attended a pre-event book signing.

13. Rosa Sickenberger & Tess Joerling 14. Elsa Plocica, Sheryl Aikman & Josie Plocica

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15. Following the event, the centerpieces were donated to WNC Boys & Girls Clubs, thanks to sponsorship by Tom and Sue Fazio.

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 89

events

july

EVENTS july 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

Street Dances

7-9PM Hendersonville Visitor Center 201 South Main St, Hendersonville, NC Street dances have been a tradition since WWI, and they recur with caller William Puckett Monday nights in Hendersonville. Dancers with no ability and up are welcome. If dancing isn’t your thing, bring a chair and set up to enjoy the square dancers.

> visithendersonvillenc.org/street-dances july 1 & 3

Shanghai Quartet

7:30-9PM Brevard Music Center 349 Andante Lane, Brevard, NC

The acclaimed chamber ensemble will be doing Beethoven’s quartets, with different selections planned for each night.

>Tickets: $28 > 828-862-2100 > brevardmusic.org

of the legend of Sherwood Forest is the premiere of a creation by local playwrights Jeff Messer and Robert Akers.

> 828-254-5146 > montfordparkplayers.org july 6 , 13 , 20 , 27

july 4

Ingles Independence Day Celebration

10AM-10:30PM

Pack Square Park, Asheville NC Family fun via Bounce Houses, splash fountain, and air dogs. Music starts at 5; fireworks, at 9:30.

> 828-251-9973 > ashevilledowntown.org/ independenceday

july 5-27

Robin Hood: Quest for Justice 7:30-9PM (Fri, Sat, Sun) Hazel Robinson Amphitheatre 92 Gay St, Asheville, NC This free, action-packed interpretation

Shindig on the Green

7-10PM

Pack Square Park 80 Court Plaza, Asheville, NC This is the launch of the 53rd season of free, live folk music and dance on the lawn in the middle of downtown. Jam sessions abound, so bring your strings to if you like. Shindigs recur Saturdays, except August 3.

> 828-258-6101 > folkheritage.org july 6, 13, 20, 27

Cool Summer Nights at Tweetsie 9AM-9PM

Tweetsie Railroad 300 Tweetsie Railroad Lane, Blowing Rock, NC

A Unique and Independent Real Estate Company since 1979 90

23 Arlington Street Asheville, NC 28801 | 828. 255.7530 | www.appalachianrealty.com | July 2019

The park extends its hours every Saturday in July. The last train leaves at 8PM; Miner’s Mountain closes at 8:30PM.

> Admission: Adult $50, Child (3-12) $32, Infant free > 800-526-5740 > tweetsie.com

july 6 -7

Art on the Greene

10AM-5PM Historic Banner Elk Elementary School 185 Azalea Circle, Banner Elk, NC Three times a year, the old school becomes a gallery for handmade arts and crafts. Rain or shine these artists will be out peddling their wares. Proceeds benefit school restoration projects.

> 828-387-0581 > townofbannerelk.org/artonthegreene july 8 -21

Aaron Copland Festival

Brevard Music Center 349 Andante Lane, Brevard, NC

Multiple Copland-themed performances will take place at a variety of locations,

all culminating in Copland’s America July 21 featuring the Brevard Concert Orchestra.

> 828-862-2100 > brevardmusic.org july 9

The Maker’s Table: Tartan and Beyond

6-7PM Blowing Rock Art & History Museum 159 Chestnut St, Blowing Rock, NC This class explores the history of the tartan, efforts to preserve less-known tartans, and movements to create new tartans for the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games and others.

> Admission: $5 > 828-295-9099 > blowingrockmuseum.org july 11-14

Grandfather Mountain Highland Games

McRae Meadows on Grandfather Mountain 2050 Blowing Rock Hwy, Linville, NC

Sheep herding, fiddling, pipes, drums, harps, genealogy, a parade of the tartans – and, of course, Scottish track and field—which includes everyone’s favorite, the throwing of the telephone pole.

> 828-733-1333 > gmhg.org/homepage.shtml july 11, 18 , 25

ArborEvenings

6-9PM North Carolina Arboretum 100 Frederick Law Olmsted Way, Asheville, NC It’s a garden party held most every Thursday night of the summer. Local beverages will be available to purchase, along with some light snacks. Watch the sunset with the plants.

> Parking: Personal Vehicle $14, Motorhome $50, Bus $100 > 828-665-2492 > ncarboretum.org

july 11

Celebrating with Traditional Master Artists

8 Samuel Ashe Drive, Asheville 28803

MLS #3278736 Stunning western views of Mt. Pisgah and beyond from this modern 2016 built home in Beaucatcher Heights

3 Bed - 3 Bath Approx. Sq. Ft: 2989

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 91

events

GARDEN DESIGN SCHOOL with

DARGAN Landscape Architects, Inc.

AUGUST 8TH - 11TH Day Programs, Limited Attendance for 10 students Cashiers, NC Come design the garden of your dreams!

Call 828-743-0307 today to sign up! dargan.com

Create nourishing, flourishing home utopias

2-5PM Harvest House Performing Arts Venue 247 Boone Heights Dr, Boone, NC Masters of folk song, storytellers, and talented dancers share Appalachian traditions. Pay what it’s worth upon exit.

> Suggested Donation: $10 > 828-263-4171 > mountainhomemusic.com july 12

Pilobolus

8-9:30PM Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts 733 Rivers St., Boone, NC The master troupe of acrobatic dance and illusion has been amazing audiences for decades.

>Tickets: Adult $30, Student $20,

Sign Up for our E-Newsletter! at c a P i ta l at P l aY . c o M

Accompanied Child (0-17) free > 800-841-2787 > theschaefercenter.org

july 13

Patti LaBelle

8-9:30PM Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts 733 Rivers St, Boone, NC

O u r we e k l y e - n ew s l e t t e r f e a t u re s e xc l u s i ve re g i o n a l co n t e n t yo u wo n’t f i n d a ny w h e re e l s e . I n c l u d i n g : • Breaking business news f r o m a c r o s s We s t e r n Nor th Carolina.

• I nfo o n eve nt s , i ncu ba to r s , a nd su p po r t p r og r a ms .

• E xc l u s i v e b e h i n d - t h e s ce n e s a r t i c l e s a n d v i d e o s .

• G i ve aw ay s f r o m t h e C a p i t a l a t P l ay C o | O p .

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One of the premiere queens of rock and soul is still touring—that voice can shatter glass, and her passion can break hearts. LaBelle is known for hits such as “Lady Marmalade”, “New Attitude”, and “On My Own”. The Grammy winner will be a show you don’t want to miss.

>Tickets: Adult $45, Student/Child $25 > 800-841-2787 > theschaefercenter.org

july 13 , 20 , 27

Art & Architecture Tours

of Hendersonville

9-10:30AM Woodlands Gallery 419 N Main St, Hendersonville, NC Doug Gelbert, creator of 400 architectural tours of American towns, leads a free 90-minute walk “revealing the secrets of Hendersonville hiding in plain sight.” No registration is required.

> 828-693-8504 > acofhc.org july 13

23rd Annual Chalk It Up! 9-11AM Downtown Hendersonville

Seven blocks of sidewalk on Main Street will be decorated by 150 artists of all skill levels competing for awards.

Entrants are given free chalk and an assigned space. Rain dates are July 20 and 27. Registration required.

> 828-697-6393 > narniastudios.com july 18 -28

Folkmoot 2019 Various WNC Venues

Now in its 23rd year, Folkmoot brings talented folk dancers in brilliant array to our region for 11 thrilling days.

Cultures from all around the world come to the mountains to learn more about each other, and to give us the opportunity to learn more about them.

> 828-452-2997 > folkmoot.org july 18 -21

Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands

10AM-6PM (Thu-Sat), 10AM-5PM (Sun)

You’ll be in a lot of photos this summer.

Is your smile one to remember?

US Cellular Center 87 Haywood St, Asheville, NC Makers of anything Appalachian converge to fill both the concourse and the arena of the US Cellular Center with handmade. The semiannual event is in its 72nd year.

> Admission: Adult $10, Child (0-11) free > 828-633-5819 > southernhighlandguild.org

ask us how to get a picture perfect, natural looking revive-a-smile. you’ll be glad you did.

Advanced implant treatment from experienced oral surgeons More comfortable & secure than dentures!

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july 19

Downtown After 5

5-9PM North Lexington Ave, Asheville, NC

Chill out. It’s Friday, and it’s free.

Prestige Subaru is bringing some major funk via Shamarr Allen (of Galactic), April B. & The Cool, and Natural Born Leaders. You bring your friends.

> 828-251-9973 > ashevilledowntown.org JULY 20

Anything that Floats Parade 2019

9AM-2PM Hominy Creek Park Hominy Creek Rd, Asheville, NC

828.255.7781 | rockclifforalsurgery.com

4 Medical Park Dr, Asheville, NC

Complete Your Outdoor Space.

Let us help with furniture, firepits and grills!

Some teams grab some tires, others go all-out making the funkiest things. The only criterion is that it floats. Raised awareness goes toward taking care of and enjoying the French Broad River.

Registration closes July 12.

> Registration: $40 > 828-252-8474x12 > riverlink.org JULY 20-28

K-9s In Flight Frisbee Dogs

Jensen Leisure Coral All Weather Woven Seating Group

Meeting Your Fireplace and Patio Needs.

264 Biltmore Ave. • Asheville, NC • 828.252.2789 July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 93

events

11AM, 1PM, 3PM (Mon-Sun); 7PM (Sat) Tweetsie Railroad 300 Tweetsie Railroad Lane, Blowing Rock, NC As seen on TV, these stunt dogs are amazing. Shows are included with admission to the park and start at 11AM, 1PM, and 3PM, with an extra 7PM show on Saturdays.

> Admission: Adult $50, Child (3-12) $32, Infant free > 800-526-5740 > tweetsie.com JULY 20

Art Reception: Abstract Forests

6-9PM Benjamin Walls Gallery 38 Broadway St, Asheville, NC Five-time Smithsonian exhibitor Benjamin Walls debuts The Abstract Forests at his new gallery in downtown Asheville. Artist presentation at 7PM.

> 877-989-2557 > benjaminwalls.com JULY 22

History Café: Sarah Gudger’s Journey to Freedom

10:30-11:30AM Swannanoa Valley Museum 223 West State St, Black Mountain, NC Katherine Cutshall of the North Carolina Room at Pack Memorial Library will use Sarah Gudger’s oral history as a case study for the challenges involved in discovering the history of American slaves.

> Registration: $5 > 828-669-9566 > history.swannanoavalleymuseum.org

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JULY 25-28

Asheville Yoga Festival Pack Square Park 80 Court Plaza, Asheville, NC

Well over 100 activities involving different types of yoga for different reasons span the four-day extravaganza. Learn more in our Yoga article on p. 57.

> Passes: Single Event $20-$35, Daily $130-$135, Multi-Day $340-$440 > ashevilleyogafestival.com JULY 26

Blowing Rock Tour of Homes

9AM-5PM St. Mary of the Hills Episcopal Church 140 Chestnut Dr, Blowing Rock, NC All homes in this year’s tour are historically and architecturally significant, with quality furnishings and landscaping, too. Tours depart from 9AM-3PM and last about two hours. Lunch is $15 extra.

>Tickets: Advance $30, Door $35 > 828-295-3217 > stmaryofthehills.org/tour JULY 27

The Brevard Music Center presents Debussy and Ravel 7:30-9PM Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium 349 Andante Lane, Brevard, NC

Amazing performances are ongoing during the Brevard Music summer festival; this one is highlighted because it features two notable composers of passionate music.

>Tickets: $20-$62 > 828-862-2100 > brevardmusic.org

JULY 30 – AUGUST 4

Lees-McRae Summer Theatre presents Newsies 7PM (Tue-Sat)& 2PM (Sat, Sun) Hayes Auditorium 191 Main St, Banner Elk, NC

Students share their interpretation of the reality-based, Tony-winning Disney story of kids who fought the system in early 1920’s NYC.

>Tickets: $18-$43 > 828-898-5241 > lmc.edu AUGUST 1-4

NC Mineral & Gem Festival

9AM-5PM The Commons Shopping Center 12121 NC-226, Spruce Pine, NC The festival celebrates its diamond anniversary with aisles upon aisles of gemstones, jewelry, beads, crystals, fossils, and other unique gift ideas from vendors from across the country.

> Admission: Adult $4, Senior $2,

Child (0-10) free > 828-765-9033 > ncgemfest.com AUGUST 1-3

Mountain Dance and Folk Festival 6:30-9:30PM UNC Asheville, Lipinsky Hall One University Heights, Asheville, NC

The nation’s longest-running features musicians, balladeers, mountain dance groups, and cloggers.

>Tickets: Adult $25, Student $10, Child (6-12) $5 > 828-258-6101x345 > folkheritage.org

July 2019 | capitalatplay.com 95

events

AUGUST 2-3

5th Annual LEAF Downtown

ACTIVE BODIES ACTIVE MIND Parkinson’s Disease is a chronic and progressive neurological disorder where part of the brain gradually becomes more damaged over time. The main symptoms of the disease are movement related.

The Y offers several programs including Pedaling for Parkinson’s, PWR!Moves, and Rock Steady Boxing to help treat many of these symptoms.

Contact Diane Saccone at dsaccone@ymcawnc.org or 828 575 2904 for more information. » ymcawnc.org/active-older-adults « YMCA OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA

3-10PM (Fri) & 9AM-10PM (Sat) Pack Square Park: 80 Court Plaza, Asheville, NC As always, our beloved LEAF celebrates multiculturalism with song, visual arts, vending, and parties.

> 828-686-8742 > theleaf.org AUGUST 3-4

Biltmore Village Art & Craft Fair

10AM-7PM (Sat), 12-5PM (Sun) Cathedral of All Souls: 9 Swan St, Asheville, NC

This 47th year, 114 fine artists of a variety of genres will be displaying their wares.

> 828-274-2831 > newmorninggallerync.com AUGUST 3

Every Moment Matters.

When living with a serious illness, Four Seasons can help you make the most of each moment and feel better doing it.

FourSeasonsCFL.org

Craft City Food & Art Tour 2019

3-6PM - Blue Spiral 1 Gallery: 38 Biltmore Ave, Asheville, NC Visitors take a walking tour behind the scenes of some of Asheville’s most important small-batch, handcrafting makers.

>Tickets $75 > 828-785-1357 > centerforcraft.org AUGUST 7

Hendo Story Club

7-9PM The Center for Art and Inspiration 125 South Main St, Hendersonville, NC Tell your story related to the theme of the night: Triumph.

Stories must be five-minutes long, true, and told without notes.

> Admission: $10 > 828-697-8547 > thecenterai.com If your organization has any local press releases for our briefs section, or events that you would like to see here, feel free to email us at events@capitalatplay.com.

Please submit your event at least six weeks in advance.

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