“While I'm not thrilled to postpone, I do think this gives us an opportunity to address some community concerns ahead of our work session, depending on when we reschedule it,” said Chris Joyell, director of the Asheville Design Center.

The meeting was to be a joint work session of the ADC, the Town of Sylva and the N.C. Department of Transportation. Earlier this month the ADC held a public forum to gather input on the needs and issues surrounding the road and had planned to bring design ideas gleaned from those comments to the work session so that town and DOT representatives could help determine which were viable.

The town entered into an agreement with the ADC last year after preliminary plans from the DOT met with widespread opposition from the public. The ADC is a nonprofit under MountainTrue that uses volunteer engineering and planning professionals, and is therefore able to offer its services for free.

A new meeting date has yet to be determined, but in the interim Joyell plans to meet with various utility providers in the corridor to better understand how their needs will impact any design concepts developed. In addition, the DOT has already given the Asheville Design Center detailed responses to community feedback, Joyell said.

The rescheduled work session should therefore be more efficient and productive than if it had been held today, since there will be more time to gather information and do some pre-vetting of design concepts than if it had been held as scheduled.

After the work session, the Asheville Design Center will put together a draft plan and schedule a community input session on that plan a couple weeks after the work session. The new estimated timeframe to complete the plan is early March.