A year after floodwaters recede, a community rises
An in-depth report on Swannanoa's recovery progress post-Helene; Plus: Law schools draw record first-year classes; Charlotte gardeners face citations; Shots fired into Medic ambulance
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LEDGER IN-DEPTH
A year after Helene struck Western N.C., Swannanoa is recovering with new shops and solidarity — even as housing shortages and hardship remain widespread
Educational Partners International, a nonprofit that recruits international teachers and operates out of Swannanoa’s Beacon Village, was gutted by the floodwaters. Crews are working to restore it. (Photo courtesy of Rey Castillo Jr.)
by Lindsey Banks
Last September, the gravel lot across from Blunt Pretzels in Swannanoa was filled with weary neighbors, unshowered and exhausted, waiting for hot meals and donated propane. Now, it’s crowded again—this time with the hum of saws and the thud of hammers, as construction crews reshape Beacon Village, a historic mill district 10 miles outside of Asheville, in Swannanoa.
For decades, Beacon Village sat mostly quiet, a relic of its 1920s heyday when it housed workers for the Beacon Blanket Manufacturing Co. That silence was shattered on Sept. 27, 2024, when Hurricane Helene swallowed roads and buildings just downhill, leaving behind mud, debris and the loss of three cornerstones of daily life: the U.S. Post Office, Ace Hardware and Ingles grocery store with its gas station.
In the year since, though, the district has stirred back to life. A new, locally owned coffee shop, Short Sleeves, opened in the spring. Rite Buy Grocery is set to debut in October, and Town Hardware—a Black Mountain landmark—recently announced plans to open a second location here in the coming months.
Their arrival is less about trendiness than necessity, filling gaps left by the storm.
“This whole thing has brought attention to the downtown Swannanoa forgot it had,” said Eddy Schoeffmann, owner of Blunt Pretzels, which moved into Beacon Village in 2020.
Hurricane Helene remains the most devastating storm Western North Carolina has experienced in decades, with 108 confirmed deaths and an estimated $59.6 billion in damages. More than 73,100 homes were impacted, and many people lived without running water for 53 days. In Swannanoa, which many considered Ground Zero for the storm’s destruction across Western North Carolina, one-third of all housing was damaged, according to census data. Hundreds of Swannanoa residents were displaced.
Businesses aren’t the only ones struggling to bounce back. One year later, many folks are still living in temporary housing, like mobile trailers or bunking with relatives and friends, and are still relying on nonprofit organizations for financial assistance and food.
“The numbers are still staggering,” said Mary Etheridge-Trigg, who co-founded Swannanoa Communities Together, a grassroots organization that formed after the storm to support Swannanoa residents. “In July alone, 460 people came to our center looking for housing or food support, and we know there are still families living in campers or vehicles 11 months later.”
Another nonprofit assisting the broad Western North Carolina area, Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte, is working with more than 3,000 families who need financial support. Many people were without a steady paycheck for months.
“Children are still traumatized,” said Maria Elena Figueroa Luna, who works for Catholic Charities’ Asheville office. “When it rains heavily, they think it’s happening again. And as we head into colder months, we know the need will only grow.”
Coming back after a lost year
For Figueroa Luna, the recovery is personal. Her fiancé, Luis Morales, co-owns The Boyz Automotive, which operates out of a seven-bay car repair shop that has sat on the bank of the Swannanoa River since the 1960s.
Next week, the repair shop will reopen its doors for the first time since Hurricane Helene.
The business was gutted during the flood—but not entirely from the river. In the immediate days after the storm, looters broke into the shop and stole more than $30,000 in tools and equipment, Figueroa Luna said. They could tell what had been stolen because of the tool carts’ tracks in the mud, left after the floodwaters receded.
Even when Figueroa Luna and her fiancé were at the shop assessing the damage and salvaging what they could, she said people were attempting to steal things from their cars.
“One lady tried to take my kid’s iPad right out of her hand,” she said. “People were walking around without shoes on. People didn’t know what to do.”
The shop also lost a $60,000 alignment machine to the floodwaters, and its original 1960s building was condemned—so even when it reopens, the shop will be down three bays, “but we’re coming back,” she said. Power was restored four or five months ago, and they’ve received a few grants to help them repurchase tools. They also have a GoFundMe page that has raised over $13,900.
The Boyz Automotive will reopen only partially at first, focusing on oil changes, inspections and brake jobs while they rebuild capacity for bigger engine work.
“This shop has been here for decades,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
Beacon Village’s new life
The Boyz Automotive sits across the street from Beacon Village. For years, the old mill neighborhood sat mostly dormant, its textile mill long gone, with residential homes still occupied but only a handful of businesses and churches, like Blunt Pretzels, Educational Partners International, Beacon Veterinary Hospital and Penland’s Funeral Home. (Beacon was the filming location for “Masterminds,” the 2016 comedy film — based on the 1997 Loomis Fargo heist in Charlotte — starring Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Jason Sudeikis.)
But over the past year, tragedy has inspired renewal.
Rite Buy Grocery is expected to open this fall, according to its Facebook page, which is a critical milestone for a community that lost its only grocery store, Ingles, in the flood. While Ingles has said it will rebuild, no construction has begun, and residents are forced to travel to neighboring towns to grocery shop.
Rite Buy declined to comment when The Ledger reached out earlier this month, but WLOS reported that the store will “offer fresh produce, meat, dairy and pantry staples, much of which is sourced from local farmers.”
Swannanoa also lost its U.S. Post Office and Ace Hardware store in the same strip. While the fate of both is unclear, a local general store in the next town over, Town Hardware in Black Mountain, announced on Facebook last week that its second location will open in Beacon Village early next year.
“When he looked at Swannanoa, we wanted to be a part of its revitalization,” owner Peter Ballhausen said in the video. “We wanted to give something back to this community.”
“Those are big wins for Swannanoa,” Etheridge-Trigg said. “[A grocery store and a hardware store] are basic pieces of infrastructure for a community to function.”
Feeding the Swannanoa Valley
Beacon Village’s Blunt Pretzels has served as Swannanoa’s kitchen, during the months following the hurricane, but also throughout the entire past year. The bakery and pretzel wholesale company initially turned into a relief hub, primarily providing free hot meals three times a day in the months after Helene.
“We didn’t plan it; it just happened,” said owner Eddy Schoeffmann. He opened the Swannanoa shop in 2020, and since Blunt Pretzels vends at music festivals, they were equipped with what was needed to cook without electricity.
“We were operating like a Burning Man camp,” Schoeffmann said. “We served 1,500 to 3,000 meals a day at the peak.”
At the beginning, neighbors were emptying their fridges and cabinets and bringing them to Schoeffmann and his team of volunteers to cook. Eventually, nonprofits like World Central Kitchen began donating food for them to cook and serve.
The kitchen kept daily meal service going through April, and eventually scaled back to what they did up until earlier this month — twice a week, dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which averaged about 120 meals.
The company, which is 85% wholesale, lost about $150,000 in revenue last year, Schoeffmann estimated, and sales are down about 25% now. Blunt also has a walk-in storefront for pretzels and a few beers on tap.
This year, Blunt turned its relief work into a nonprofit called Blunt Kitchen and received a donated smoker trailer that they are converting into a fully equipped disaster kitchen.
“The food truck is a resiliency tool,” said Chris Smith, Blunt’s sales manager, who also manages the nonprofit side. He lives in Beacon Village and came across Schoeffmann and Blunt Pretzels a year ago when searching for hurricane supplies. He began volunteering to help cook meals, and he’s now a part of the official Blunt team.
“We want to be ready for the next storm,” he said. “And in the meantime, we’ll keep feeding people. Last Thanksgiving, we smoked six turkeys and ate outside together all day. We’re planning to do it again.”
Not above the water yet
Despite recent progress, the road to a full recovery is long. Affordable housing remains the most pressing issue, with many displaced residents unable to find rentals that meet income requirements.
“A year later, no new housing has been built to replace what was lost,” Etheridge-Trigg said, noting that most rebuilds have been by people who either own their home or who had help from a nonprofit. “This is a 10-year recovery, at least.”
In July, Swannanoa Communities Together saw 460 individuals through its door in search of basic necessities, like food, and assisted 150 households with financial assistance for housing. Etheridge-Trigg said the uptick is connected to the sudden end of the Healthy Opportunities Pilot (HOP) Program, a N.C. initiative that provided Medicaid enrollees with non-medical services, like housing and food.
The approach of winter adds urgency. Many families still need heating assistance, reliable transportation and help paying bills. Swannanoa Communities Together, along with many other nonprofit organizations still operating in the area, like Catholic Charities, are providing as much support as they can.
“We have fewer donations coming in now, but the need hasn’t gone away,” said Figueroa Luna of Catholic Charities.
“Our goal is going to remain the same,” Etheridge-Trigg said, “which is to try to make sure that everyone who wants to stay in Swannanoa can stay in Swannanoa, and everyone who was here and lost their home can have a situation that is sustainable moving forward where they can stay.”
A community moving forward
Beacon Village, which is just a small part of Swannanoa, serves as an example of the larger area’s recovery.
And while there’s still more to be done, there are reasons to celebrate. Some debris has been cleared. Roads have been repaired, even if with short-term fixes like temporary bridges. New stores are opening. A community that came together to weather the storm has remained united and supportive as the recovery continues.
“People, regular people, stepping up and supporting each other. … Those are the things that I feel like have worked better than anything else, better than any large entity in terms of making the gradual steps that we have made to take care of each other,” Etheridge-Trigg said.
And the one-year anniversary of Helene will not be marked just by remembrance, but by gathering—just like residents did when their world turned upside down last September.
Smith said Blunt Pretzels will host a community meal tomorrow to mark the date. They’re even planning to cook the food as they did in those first couple of months after the storm: on stoves powered by propane tanks.
“It’s open to the whole valley—a chance to come together, eat and remember how far we’ve come,” Smith said.
For Schoeffmann, that’s what matters most.
“This neighborhood reminds me of Detroit,” he said. “It’s a post-industrial place with a scrappy spirit. We’ve been through a lot, but we’re still here—and we’re building something new.”
Lindsey Banks is assistant editor for The Charlotte Ledger: lindsey@cltledger.com. She’s also a Swannanoa native.
Related Ledger articles:
“In one mountain community, a crisis comes into focus” (🔒, Feb. 5)
“The mountains are calling” (🔒, Sept. 12)
The Ledger’s “Mountain Updates” pop-up newsletter, which provided essential news updates on the region from Oct. 1, 2024, through Feb. 6, 2025.
You might be interested in these Charlotte events
Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:
SATURDAY: “NC State Extension Master Gardener℠ Plant Sale,” 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., at N.C. Cooperative Extension, Mecklenburg County Center, 2415 Lester St. Shop for an array of perennials, natives, vegetables and bulbs, many grown by Master Gardener Volunteers. In addition, there will be plants from the grounds of Historic Rosedale as well as from select local nurseries. Free.
SATURDAY: “Potters Market at the Mint,” 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Mint Museum Randolph, 2730 Randolph Road. Stock up on pottery from more than 50 of North Carolina’s top ceramic artists (including over 30 from Western North Carolina) at Potters Market at the Mint. Come see high-quality ceramic work in one location, interact with the makers, explore the galleries of Mint Museum Randolph, and enjoy live music, pottery demos, a beer garden and local food vendors. $25/ticket.
OCTOBER 5: “Swim Across America - Charlotte Open Water Charity Swim,” 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at YMCA Camp Thunderbird, 1 Thunderbird Lane, Lake Wylie, S.C. Swim Across America’s charity open water swim welcomes swimmers and volunteers of all ages and skill levels to participate and “make waves to fight cancer.” Proceeds from SAA Charlotte support Levine Cancer and Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte. New same day pool swim option this year. Online registration closes Oct. 1. All swimmers are required to raise at least $400 by event day. Swimmers under 18 are required to raise $250 by event day.
OCTOBER 11: “8th Annual Nurturing Parenthood Event,” 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Noda Brewing Co., 150 W. 32nd St. Join Mind Body Baby NC for Charlotte’s largest perinatal resource event! This family-friendly event brings together an incredible variety of perinatal practitioners, educators, and services to support you through pregnancy, postpartum, and early parenting. Explore resources, connect with experts, shop local vendors, and enjoy activities designed for the whole family. Free.
➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.
In brief
Law schools see record first-year classes: A surge in applicants has led to record-high first-year enrollment at many U.S. law schools, including Elon University School of Law, which has a campus in Charlotte. Nationwide, the applicant pool grew 18% this year, building on a strong 2024 cycle. (Reuters)
Charlotte gardeners face citations: Some Charlotte residents say they’ve been cited for letting native plants grow taller than a foot, despite the city’s sustainability pledges. Advocates formed the Coalition to Protect Our Urban Nature to push the City Council to amend the ordinance, arguing that naturalistic gardens support pollinators and reduce pollution. City officials note residents can register gardens for protection, but critics say the process isn’t codified in law and is poorly publicized. (Observer)
Shots fired into Medic ambulance: An ambulance carrying a patient was struck by gunfire around 2:30 a.m. on Thursday near the Midnight Diner and Spectrum Center. The Medic ambulance drove to police headquarters, where the patient was transferred to another unit and taken to the hospital. No injuries were reported from the shooting, and no suspects have been named. (WBTV)
Pavement and dark roofs drive Charlotte’s heat: A new analysis by the Smart Surfaces Coalition found Charlotte neighborhoods with more rooftops, parking lots and pavement can be up to 14 degrees hotter than nearby green areas. (WFAE)
Retail bonanza in Indian Land: New locations of Target, Costco and Lowes Foods will all open in Indian Land, S.C., in a three-week stretch. Lowes Foods is opening Oct. 9. Target is opening Oct. 12. Costco is opening Oct. 30. (Rock Hill Herald)
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