A 40-acre plot of land in Swannanoa, North Carolina near Asheville will turn from a vacant lot into a brand new world-class bike skills park designed by Velosolutions with an anticipated completion date of summer 2024.
The site was once used by the Beacon Manufacturing Company after it relocated from Massachusetts to North Carolina in 1924. The owner of the mill built a factory and an employee village with single-family houses and duplexes in 1925 to attract employees to the mill, which eventually became the largest blanket manufacturer in the world during World War II, and the largest employer in the Swannanoa Valley with as many as 2,200 workers.
The village had a business district too and held a grocery, furniture and drug stores with a bank and a movie theater. According to a press release the mill saw steady growth into the 1960s but it shuttered in 2002 because of financial problems. In 2003 an arsonist set fire to the factory destroying it and the lot has sat dormant since then.
The Beacon Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit co-founded by local entrepreneurs “aims to catalyze a community gathering space as the heart of a larger, multi-phase commercial and residential revitalization of the quaint twenty block town.”
The team of entrepreneurs picture “outdoor industry, living-wage businesses” with attainable housing solutions and community gathering spaces when the Beacon Village is complete.
The bike park will have slopestyle and jump lines with a Velosolutions pump track, a bike park pavilion and a perimeter walking track. The first phase of the Beacon Village project is estimated to cost $4.5 million. The park will also have terrain available to skateboarders, rollerbladers, one-wheels and adaptive wheelchairs.
