When it comes to noise, Commissioner Harold Hensley of the Sylva town board is clearly prepared to make a bit of it himself if necessary to get others to turn the volume down.

“The complaint I’ve got is when you can hear music in your house with your door shut,” Hensley told a restaurant owner during a discussion of the proposed ordinance at a town meeting last week. “I don’t need to hear it in my living room.”

Tori Walters, a co-owner of The Soul Infusion Tea House and Bistro, was one of several who shared concerns over the ordinance at a public hearing last week.

“We’d like to have the opportunity to have a little fun in town,” Walters said.

Under the new ordinance, noise heard more than 20 feet from its source between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. is too loud.

Hensley has led a push recently to tighten the town’s ordinance. Walters pointed out that Hensley didn’t exactly live in a rural section of Sylva, however.

“I do want you to know I lived out of town,” the commissioner responded. “Town came to me.”

Hensley suggested Walters consider a “sound shell” to help contain the music at the restaurant, which has a small outdoor stage.

“Your entertainment cannot disturb the neighborhood,” he said.

The town’s current noise ordinance relies on the key words “reasonably prudent,” as in what an average person would consider to be excessively loud between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The new language sets a distance requirement: “The playing of any musical instrument or electronic sound amplification equipment outdoors or from a motor vehicle, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., that can be heard from an adjoining property or at distance of greater than 20 feet from the sound source.”

Other towns, such as Highlands most recently, have opted to rely less on subjectivity and instead have set decibel levels that can’t be exceeded.

Walters told commissioners she did not actually have any problems or objections to the tougher ordinance. What she did want, however, was for the town to be aware of the need for business owners to bring in live entertainment to help attract customers, and not to become increasingly restrictive.

Walters said during a grand-opening celebration a few months ago, the restaurant had a rock-and-roll band perform. It was a successful draw, but “they wanted to squeal their wheels a bit,” she said of band members, and perhaps were noisier than they should have been. Walters said she is attentive to the noise levels and has asked groups to turn it down, and that the rock-and-roll group was the exception, not the rule.

“A lot of businesses are pretty loud around there, I’m not the only one,” she told Hensley, pointing out that UPS, which is next to the Soul Infusion, is even louder when workers there are using pneumatic tools to fix equipment.

Mayor Maurice Moody assured Walters and the crowd of 20 or so gathered for the hearing that the noise ordinance “is not directed solely toward Soul Infusion.”

And Commissioner Danny Allen added that he recently received complaints from a town resident about music from another restaurant: “You are not the only one,” Allen told Walters.

Amanda Dugan, a Western Carolina University student, also cautioned commissioners not to be excessive in applying noise-ordinance restrictions. They risked squelching the local economy if they do that, she said.

“If they are not going to be having music, I’m going to Asheville,” Dugan said. “It is really important to have somewhere in town we can go and spend our money locally.”

Curt Collins also asked commissioners not to become overzealous in regulating noise.

“It seems like there’s been a lot of clampdown lately,” Collins, a farmer with Avant Garden in Cullowhee, said.

In the do-you-remember, they-were-right-after-all category, the enormous popularity of Jackson County’s new library has meant finding parking at the renovated courthouse and library addition can sometimes prove a real pain.

So much so, Assistant Librarian Liz Gregg has taken to parking off the hill and walking to work, even while wearing dress shoes and slogging through wet grass. A minor inconvenience for her, she said, that frees up one additional parking space nearer the building for library patrons.

“Besides, I’m here for eight-plus hours. I need that exercise,” Gregg reasoned.

The only real problem for Gregg and others who are willing to walk to the library? The stairs from Mark Watson Park, one of the major sources of extra parking that is located below the courthouse on the backside of the hill, are not in very good shape.

“The steps are kind of crumbly,” Gregg said.

Enter the board of county commissioners, which is now considering what best it should do. County Manager Chuck Wooten told commissioners last month that to officially reopen the stairs from Mark Watson Park “we’ll have to put in a railing, and assess other possible repairs.”

That assessment is under way.

Also expected to help ease the parking strain is a continuing slowdown in construction work. Those final fixes that always seem to surface with a new project should continue to diminish, meaning fewer workers’ trucks and more patron parking, said head Librarian Dottie Brunette.

Air conditioning has been an ongoing problem, as have lightening strikes and simple electric surges that knock out the computer circuit boards, requiring workmen’s services.

“We’re the highest point on the hill,” Brunette said. “It’s like I’ve told people, we’ve got Lady Justice on top of the courthouse with her arm up in the air just beckoning for it.”

One day, for undetermined reasons, each punch of an elevator button triggered the security gates to sound. That made for an interesting work atmosphere, the librarian said.

But overall, the opening has been gone smoothly, Brunette said. The new library celebrated its grand opening last month. It was forced to shutdown entirely for one day after a waterline break, but otherwise, the library has been open for business when promised.

In all, 402 brand new library cards have been issued, and the library (including the grand opening celebration and subsequent programs) had 8,184 visitors in 20 days — an average daily attendance of 409 people. That compares with average daily attendance of 300 to 350 in the old library on Main Street.

“Before we ever moved up here, there were folks for various reasons and from various points of view who felt that the parking would be more limited than we would like it to be,” Brunette said.

There are two actual parking lots at the library, plus some additional spaces right out front and down off the hill.

Supporters of the courthouse site wanted a library within walking distance of downtown. Putting it there on the hill overlooking Sylva, they said, would avoid sprawl and help keep the downtown area vibrant, and give the iconic but vacant historic courthouse a community purpose.

From the get-go, however, the community and the then board of commissioners knew the site wouldn’t be perfect. There is no room for future expansion. The road winding up the courthouse hill is steep and narrow. And, of course, there is that lack of parking.

A group who wanted the library built at the Jackson Plaza touted the two-acre tract on the outskirts of town as being easier to work with, and pointed at the time to its ample parking as one highlight that should be considered.

When construction on the lofty Clarion Inn started in 2008, the town of Sylva thought it was finally going to get a recognizable name-brand hotel to help attract visitors and commerce.

Three years later, and the Clarion Inn is instead the town’s biggest eyesore, defacing the viewscape high atop a mountain along the main commercial corridor. If the unfinished hotel today serves any useful purpose, perhaps it’s as a visual reminder that when granting regulatory breaks, beware of big-talking dreamers bearing big plans.

The developers, TJ Investments — father and son team Thomas and John Dowden — went into bankruptcy. Alpharetta Community Bank of Georgia, which seized the property after the men failed to payoff a $5 million loan, now owns the unfinished Clarion Inn.

In turn, however, the bank is being sued by Cooper Construction Company, which the Dowdens left $1.9 million in the red after failing to pay the firm for all its work. DeLaine DeBruhl, vice president and field operations manager for the Hendersonville-based contractors, declined to comment about the situation here in Sylva, citing the pending litigation.

Court records indicate the case has been stalled since February, when one of the parties involved had a lawyer withdraw as counsel. The two case files at the Jackson County Clerk of Court on the hotel litigation are some six inches thick, including depositions and court motions. But there is not the smallest sign to be found of possible resolution, and in the meantime, finding a new buyer to take over the project seems remote given the lien against the property.

Hindsight 20/20?

A tangled, drawn-out court battle over an abandoned building sure wasn’t the economic development the town’s leaders dreamed of when they granted that building height variance to the father-and-son duo.  

“We were so thrilled to be getting a big chain hotel there,” Sylva Commissioner Harold Hensley said of the town’s decision four years ago to allow the Clarion Inn a fourth floor instead of holding it to three.

The developers claimed the hotel required a 75-foot maximum height instead of just 45 feet as mandated by town regulations.

Hensley, Stacy Knotts, Ray Lewis and then-commissioner-now-Mayor Maurice Moody voted in favor of the variance; Commissioner Danny Allen missed that meeting and an opportunity to vote yes or no.

On paper, at least, things looked good: plans called for a restaurant, convention room and 78 guest rooms.

Instead the economy crashed, and the hotel never opened. In fact, the hotel was never even finished. Today it’s a hulking, depressing presence on top of a steep cutout bank, with boarded-up windows, a surrounding chain-link fence to deter derelicts, and landscaping consisting of waist-high weeds.

“Obviously it didn’t turn out how it was expected,” Knotts said. “I didn’t envision it would be sitting there vacant. We’ve been waiting a long time for something to happen.”

You do the best you can do at the time, make the best decision that you can, and move forward, Hensley said.

“I don’t know that (it’s particularly useful) to go back and regret anything you’ve done,” he said. “Hindsight is 20/20.”

Chris Matheson, a council member who was not on the board at the time of the variance, said she could sympathize with how the situation must have appeared then.

“Had the economy not taken a turn for the worse, if it had been completed as planned and bought a tremendous amount of revenue and activity to that end of town, we’d look at it through different eyes,” Matheson said. “I don’t think we’d even be having this conversation.”

Hensley said he hopes something changes — positively — in connection with the vacant hotel, located across from Wal-Mart.

Town Manager Adrienne Isenhower said it has proven difficult to get straight answers about the hotel’s future — or determine if it even has one. She spent some time early on trying to track down decision makers.

“When I first got here, there was an investment company that said someone was interested. But I haven’t heard anything since. Something needs to happen, it’s a major eyesore,” Isenhower said.

She said if there isn’t an actual use for the building, perhaps the time has come to consider tearing it down.

The problem is, the town isn’t legally in a position to make that decision. And it would seem that until the court case is resolved, no one — anywhere — can make any meaningful decisions regarding Sylva’s empty Clarion Inn.

Just stepping inside the Sylva Police Department gives a person an immediate understanding of why Chief Davis Woodard is pushing so hard for a new building.

The department’s 14 officers, with one more being hired soon, and its three auxiliary officers share 1,000 square feet of room in the 1927-completed building, located on Allen Street. The building was originally designed and built for the town’s fire department; the police department started using it in 1990.

To describe the Sylva Police Department as rather crowded is akin to describing Sylva’s newly renovated historic courthouse and library complex as merely pretty. The words fall short of the reality.

The town’s police officers are crammed into the equivalent of five to seven standard parking spaces.

A few highlights include:

The women’s bathroom at the police department was recently sacrificed to create a tiny break room; all officers now share what had been the men’s bathroom.

Evidence is stored in three different areas; only one of which is actually in the police department. One of the evidence rooms, down in the basement of the building, sometimes floods when bordering Scotts Creek jumps its banks.

There is little to no room left, anywhere, for storing any additional items critical to any successful police investigation. This means when the State Bureau of Investigation finishes up lab work on evidence from a recent double homicide in Sylva, Woodard needs the town’s maintenance crew to construct some kind of special holding place to hold the dozens of items that will be sent to Sylva in anticipation of a trial. Who knows what the officers will do if another big case takes place anytime soon within the town’s limits.

A weight room or workout area, common to most police departments in the region in hopes officers will keep in shape, is simply out of the question. A Bowflex machine is gathering dust in storage at the back of town hall.

Full-sized personal lockers for the officers are also impossible given the space limitations — Woodard jokes about the “preschool”-sized ones in use now, quipping that he’d like his officers to have big-boy and big-girl lockers instead.

The first door to the left in the Sylva police department opens into a 20-x-18 square foot room used by the assistant police chief, four patrol supervisors and seven road officers. Lt. George Lamphiear said the scene is particularly chaotic during shift changes, with everyone jockeying for a place to work. Or in the middle of a huge case such as the double homicide, when the building had to host an additional four or five SBI agents, the district attorney and three or four of his assistants.

“We came into work (that day), and turned right around and went back out,” Lamphiear said. There was no room left for patrol officers and their supervisors to work in the building.

The department also has a small office for the police chief, a slightly larger office for the department’s two detectives, and a tiny reception area at the front. A couple of storage closets, and that’s it.

No interview room, no conference room and inadequate parking in the back, to boot.

If the Sylva Police Department does acquire the old library, Woodard and his officers will have, in place of 1,000 square feet, an airy 6,400 square feet at their disposal, plus 19 parking spaces.

Sounds like heaven on earth to Woodard and his officers.

The situation

Sylva’s council members have asked Jackson County to give the them the old library building on Main Street, now standing vacant, to use as a police department. County commissioners agreed last week to meet with their town counterparts on July 18 to discuss it. Sylva is offering, in return for the old library building, to give Jackson County the old chamber of commerce building it owns, a small building on Grindstaff Cove on the approach to downtown.

The sticking point, if there is one, might involve the disparate tax values of the two buildings involved. Sylva’s building is valued at $157,560; the county’s building is $796,000.

Town leaders, however, have described the swap as an issue of fairness, noting that in past years they have allowed the county to use town-owned buildings, such as the senior center, for no charge to taxpayers, or at nominal lease amounts such as $1 a year.

Easing congestion on N.C. 107 and general economic development issues look to shape the context of Sylva’s upcoming municipal elections.

Three commissioner positions are open. Two landed in their seats via appointments instead of election by voters: Harold Hensley and Chris Matheson, who will now have to officially run to keep their seats. Ray Lewis won his seat four years ago.

Hensley was not prepared to commit this week on whether he will seek election, saying he is truly undecided at this juncture.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” Hensley acknowledged, adding that his decision, however, will hinge on whether he feels he “can benefit the taxpayers.”

Hensley had served on the board previously, but narrowly lost his seat in the last election in 2009. He found his way back on the board last year, however, being appointed to replace the outgoing Sarah Graham, who resigned after moving out of the town limits.

Like Hensley, Lewis wouldn’t commit one way or another about whether he will run.

“It is a little early yet. I haven’t made my mind up,” said Lewis, who is finishing a second term as commissioner.

Matheson said she would run, seeking this time to win election to the post she was appointed to fill when Maurice Moody moved up from commissioner to mayor in the November 2009 election.

“I do want to be a part of helping ease congestion on 107,” Matheson said. “To continue working with the DOT, and the county.”

Matheson also wants to see further improvements to Mill Street (known as Backstreet locally). And, the former assistant district attorney is adamant about helping shepherd the police department from cramped quarters into more spacious accommodations.

The town is trying to get the county to swap the old library building for the town’s former chamber of commerce building. The old library, Matheson said, would make a perfect home for the police department.

One newcomer has announced his intentions of running for a town commissioner position. Sylva businessman and resident John Bubacz, owner of Signature Brew Coffee Company, said he became interested in serving after Commissioner Danny Allen indicated he would resign for unspecified reasons at an unspecified point in the future, something which has yet to actually happen.

And, Bubacz said, he was motivated to run while following the town’s wrangle over how best to fund the Downtown Sylva Association. Bubacz is on the DSA board.

“I literally want to do this because I want to be a part,” he said. “There is nothing specific I want to change or accomplish, but I do feel that responsibility.”

Tired of watching a source of possible town revenue end up in the state’s coffers, Sylva wants to start collecting parking fees at the town hall.

Last week, commissioners tweaked the language of the proposed parking ordinance, clarifying that only certified town police officers could issue citations. There had been some thought that it might be wise to empower any town employee to issue civil citations, but commissioners Chris Matheson and Harold Hensley nixed that idea.

“It ought to read they strictly are police certified,” Hensley said, concurring with Matheson’s objections to having non-police employees given that responsibility.

The primary payment area for people cited parking illegally in Sylva will be Town Hall. Police Chief Davis Woodard, however, said he’d like for people to be able to pay at the police department as a “secondary option,” such as during holidays when Town Hall is closed.

Parking in an unauthorized parking zone in Sylva will cost violators $10 for each violation. All loading and unloading in designated zones is limited to 30 minutes, with a $10 violation penalty for those taking up space for longer than the time permitted.

It costs $150 for parking in a handicapped space illegally, and $50 for a fire lane violation.

Sylva leaders are looking to tighten the town’s noise ordinance on the heels of complaints by one of their own.

Commissioner Harold Hensley, who lives in the N.C. 107 area of Sylva, said he took calls a few weeks ago from neighbors about the loudness of music from a nearby restaurant. Hensley said he believes people should be able to sit outside their own homes if they want and enjoy a cookout without being bothered by loud music.

“You can’t contain all noise,” the town’s attorney, Eric Ridenour, told Hensley, adding that “loud” is in the ear of the beholder, as it were.

“A noise ordinance should be applied when you are disturbing people. I don’t care what time of the day or night,” Hensley said. “If I can’t talk (and be heard), I say it’s unreasonable.”

Hensley emphasized he is not against music; that he just objects to excessive noise: “If it’s so loud when I sit on my deck and I can’t talk to the person next to me, it’s too loud,” he said.

The town’s current noise ordinance carries the key words “reasonably prudent;” as in what an average person would consider to be excessively loud noises taking place between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The new language would read: “The playing of any musical instrument or electronic sound amplification equipment outdoors or from a motor vehicle, between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., that can be heard from an adjoining property or at distance of greater than 20 feet from the sound source.”

Like Ridenour, former Assistant District Attorney and current Commissioner Chris Matheson cautioned her fellow board members that noise ordinances are difficult to enforce. She recommended they consider an “objective test,” such as using a decibel reader, which many towns already use.

Matheson, however, bowed to the new language stipulating an actual 20-foot distance after Police Chief Davis Woodard said that had been his recommendation and remained his preference.

Tori Walters, co-owner of the Soul Infusion Tea House and Bistro, the restaurant on N.C. 107 that apparently sparked Hensley’s neighbors’ ire, said Monday the distance requirement would not “bother us at all.”

“We have worked diligently making sure that all the music played at our establishment is at reasonable decibel levels,” Walters said, adding that they ask musicians not to play after 10:30 p.m., a 30-minute cutoff prior to the town’s 11 p.m. requirement.

Noise ordinance public hearing

What: The town of Sylva is tightening its noise ordinance

When: July 7 at 5:30 p.m.

Where: Town Hall

A discussion about the future of Pinnacle Park outside Sylva will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 4, followed by a short hike from the Fisher Creek trailhead.

The 1,100 acre tract once served as Sylva’s source of drinking water and has now been preserved.

Those interested in the hiking and biking potential of the park, as well as those who use the park for birding, wildlife and native plant activities, are encouraged to attend, and future volunteer opportunities will be discussed. Information from the discussion will help the town of Sylva and the Pinnacle Park Foundation determine future park needs.

The Jackson County Greenways Project is organizing the event in honor of National Trails Day.

828.293.3053 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The fate of the organization tasked with marketing and promoting downtown Sylva remains in flux, but it appears positioned to survive in a yet-to-be determined restructured form.

“We are working very cooperatively, jointly with the town board, to come up with what we think will be the best solution — at this point, we don’t know what that is,” Lucy Wofford, president of the Downtown Sylva Association, said this week.

Town Manager Adrienne Isenhower last week presented three options to town commissioners, telling them that the $15,000 contribution town leaders agreed to earlier might not be enough to keep the organization afloat. That amount represented a $3,000 increase over this year’s funding for the group.

DSA initially requested $25,000 from Sylva leaders, saying anything less would jeapordize the group’s solvency. Director Julie Sylvester told commissioners that to continue raising money directly from members, namely downtown businesses, was not financially sustainable. Wofford said she agreed with Sylvester’s assessment, saying it put the group into more of a merchants association’s role than that of a Main Street organization.

Being a state Main Street group opens the door to certain state grants and support. Under the program, however, DSA is required to have a paid director.

Isenhower said the first option available to commissioners would leave the DSA at $15,000. The second option would bring a DSA director in-house as a town employee at $18 dollars an hour, 20 hours a week (with no benefits) for a total salary of $20,150 a year. And the third option would also bring the director in-house, but would add duties as a town planner, which the town currently lacks, bringing the amount needed for a fulltime salary up to $44,800 ($30,000 salary plus benefits).

Commissioner Harold Hensley said this week that if DSA decided they did need more than the original $15,000, then for his part, the position of director would definitely need to move to being a town employee.

DSA Board Member Robin Kevlin said she sees no problem with the director of DSA becoming a paid employee of Sylva.

“Everything is up for discussion,” she said, adding that for DSA’s part, “we’re basically waiting to see what the town of Sylva is going to do, what their wishes are.”

Although DSA’s purpose, witnessed by its name, is nuturing a vibrant downtown, Hensley has repeatedly questioned pumping town tax dollars into a group that benefits only one commercial district of town.

Kevlin expressed sympathy for Hensley’s wish to see DSA’s focus expand beyond the downtown area — “if they are going to give the money, I understand what they are saying,” she said.

There might be a model nearby to do just that.

The Franklin Main Street Program is different from the Downtown Waynesville Association and the Downtown Sylva Association in that it’s not solely limited to the downtown business district.

While historic downtown Franklin is the only area that qualifies for the state’s program, locally they’ve expanded the vision to include the other commercial districts in the town limits.

Jackson County currently handles zoning enforcement for Sylva, with $5,000 in the town’s budget set aside for payment. That money, under the third option, could go toward a fulltime in-house town planner/DSA director.

The town manager was instructed by the board to get more financial numbers on DSA together for commissioners to consider. She plans on presenting those at the next town meeting, set to take place June 2 at 5:30 p.m. Isenhower said she hopes for a decision on DSA and a vote on the town’s overall budget at that same meeting.

Each of the three options, framed as a “new proposal using fund balance and/or capital reserve,” would see a police officer added to patrol downtown for $16,500, and gives the police chief and assistant police chief raises that total $7,520 (including benefits). A downtown officer was an important issue for Commissioner Danny Allen, a former police officer himself.

You know it’s summer in Sylva when Concerts on the Creek gets going, bringing local and regional music and family fun to Bridge Park Pavilion every Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

This year, local favorites the Rye Holler Boys will get the season going with a performance on May 27.

They’ll be followed on the outdoor stage in the coming weeks by other popular local bands such as the Freight Hoppers, the Elderly Brothers and Balsam Range, as well as regional talent Big House Radio. Big House walked away with the top prize at WNC Magazine’s Last Band Standing battle of the bands style competition, and they’ll stop off in Sylva in mid-August.

Concerts on the Creek got its start in 2009, so concertgoers will be welcomed back to the park for the third year of free music this summer.

“We started Concerts on the Creek three years ago through an Appalachian Regional Commission Grant,” said Julie Spiro, executive director of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce. It was the chamber who started the concerts, but when they proved popular with the public, the series started to grow from there.

“It was very well received and the locals as well as visitors really enjoyed it so we thought we’d expand on that and invite three other partners to help us produce the concert series,” said Spiro

These days, the chamber teams up with Jackson County Parks and Recreation and the Town of Sylva to produce the programs.

But, said Spiro, the free music is just the impetus to get people out and about. It’s the music along with the restaurants and shops in downtown Sylva that really create a festive, summer atmosphere.

“We hope both locals and visitors will stimulate the economy by shopping and dining out before the free concerts,” said Spiro. Part of the central idea behind the series is to give people a venue for getting out on the town, a gift to both natives and tourists and a chance to kick back with talented artists and support local businesses, all at once.

Marne Harris is a Sylva resident who frequents the concerts every summer, and she appreciates them as a piece of fun and relaxation that showcases the town’s mountain charm.

“They are a time for the community to reconnect, catch up with friends and to celebrate our awesome, beautiful town tucked in the mountains, all the while getting to enjoy some great local music and dancing,” said Harris.

One of her favorite aspects of the events, she said, is watching the hodgepodge of otherwise-unconnected music lovers come together. Harris and her husband have young children who, she said, take full advantage of the park’s open space, but they’re surrounded by older folks, students, young music aficionados and, of course, other families.

Of course, Sylva is well known in the region for its vibrant music scene, which mixes the traditional bluegrass acts that find their roots in these mountains, with more contemporary and underground acts that make the circuit of local venues in town. There’s even a metal band from Cherokee the jaunts over to play every now and again. So in Sylva, it’s not hard to find a range of listeners for the talent the series has to offer.

This summer, the town will be treated to 15 weeks of beautiful music against an equally stunning mountain backdrop, and all you need is a lawn chair and a listening ear.

2011 Schedule

May 27: Rye Holler Boys

June 3: John Luke Carter

June 10: Buchanan Boys

June 17: Mountain Faith

June 24: Johnny Floor

& the Wrong Crowd

July 1: The Elderly Brothers

July 8: Sundown

July 15: The Wild Hog Band

July 22: Josh Fields Band

July 29: The Freight Hoppers

Aug. 5: Balsam Range

Aug.12: Big House Radio

Aug. 19: Johnny Webb Band

Aug. 26: Hurricane Creek

Sept. 2: Mountain Faith Youth Jam