What do you want Big Ivy to look like in 20 years?
The Alliance and ADC began a Blueprints workshop with the Big Ivy community in Fall 2009. Facing development threats in the Big Ivy Valley, the Big Ivy Community Club and the Rural Preservation Society collaborated to initiate this community-based process.
Western North Carolina has grown tremendously over the last 10 years, primarily from second home and retirement home development.
While that growth has slowed with the general economic downturn, it will return – Asheville is just too desirable a place to live for people not to continue to come here. Big Ivy is a prime location for these types of development, being 20 minutes from Asheville and having lots of open land and some large parcels. The proposed widening of I-26 only increases Big Ivy’s appeal. Since Buncombe County has minimal zoning regulation and little planning activity on the community-level, almost anything could be built in Big Ivy right now. The Blue Ridge Blueprints process offered residents the opportunity to plan for Big Ivy’s future instead of it being determined by private developers who are not invested in the community in the same way residents are.
While this project did not result in a final report, Big Ivy residents invested a lot of time in this effort. In November 2009, 30 members of the steering committee met to identify Big Ivy’s assets and challenges. See the results of that exercise here (.pdf). Then in January, 2010, the steering committee met to engage in a visioning exercise, answering the question, “What do we want Big Ivy to look like, be like, and have in 2020?” Click here (.pdf) to see the themes that emerged from that work. Then in July 2010, the community hosted a day-long workshop to flesh out strategies for each goal.