Aug. 17, 2026
By Jonathan Rich
BrevardBeagle.com
Public comment at Monday night’s Brevard City Council meeting was very much a one-sided perspective: neighbors adjacent to a proposed affordable housing project being considered on land owned by Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church made it clear they do not want the City of Brevard to consider allowing it to be put there.
Several local residents spoke at Monday’s municipal meeting in opposition to the project and the talk of the town that night revolved around plans by the church and the city to build an affordable housing development with at least 50 separate units on 4.7 acres of land located behind the church property on East Main Street between North Johnson and Franklin streets and down a hill toward the corner of East French Broad Street.
The proposed project and its perceived problems are not new to Brevard City Council meetings.
In February 2024, the city invested $50,000 to determine if the undeveloped wooded area could be developed as a site for low-to-moderate income housing.
In June of that same year, the city signed a three-year lease agreement for $1 with the church to pursue the endeavor.
However, those plans started to stall in September 2024 when engineers from Solid Ground NC tested soil samples from the property and found the ground would have to be completely removed and replaced to build the intended large multi-family complex on that property.
In December 2024, representatives from the UNC School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative told council members an updated geotechnical analysis of soil indicated the mix of sandy clay, sandy silt and silty sand that would need to be undercut and regraded for construction would cost at least $19 million to develop 3.5 acres of the wooded property for the intended rental units.
That revised price tag parked progress on the project for more than a year and a half, but recently the Missouri-based Greenway Development Group expressed interest in reviving it.
Representatives told both the city and the church they could mitigate the soil issue effectively and efficiently to bring plans for the project closer to a reality on the property than ever before.
Monday night Brevard City Manager Wilson Hooper needed the City Council’s permission to amend the original contract in terms of time and procedure in order to move forward in further discussions with the developer.
During public comment time Monday, the people who could potentially live adjacent to the property came to tell local officials once again why they do not want the proposed complex in their respective backyards.
“I am a nature lover and I come from a family of nature lovers,” began Carol Hamann who lives off of College View Terrace during her three minutes of time to speak before Brevard City Council. She then explained that her family were farmers, her son is a biologist and her daughter-in-law is a geologist. All members of her family are against disturbing the adjacent woods and their inhabitants in favor of a new place for people to live.
“They visited me about two years ago when the previous proposal was on tap. We went over to the church property and looked at the property there,” Hamann said. “The huge trees, the beautiful greenery and so forth. They said to me, ‘Mom, do anything that you can to keep them from developing that property.’”
“Just leave it alone,” Hamman summarized. “Those animals, those birds, those trees; the vegetation there is a beautiful greenspace in this city and it would be very much appreciated if you would respect my feelings, theirs, and all of the nature lovers in this city.”
Just as she had when the previous plans came before Brevard City Council, potential project adjacent property owner Dawn Ellis of Appletree Street again voiced her opposition to the project on the basis that the stormwater runoff could flood her home on the property where she has lived for 39 years.
“What happens if they take those trees down? What happens to that water?” she asked. “Right now it puddles in my front yard. It puddles across the street, and we have trees back there.”
“What happens to the property if they abandon it like they did to the property at the bottom of Jailhouse Hill and caused an eyesore coming into our pretty little town?” she continued, referring to the failed City Camper property down French Broad Street from the historic Transylvania County Courthouse. “The main thing is we bought our houses because we wanted to live there … why should we give up the value of our houses for a housing complex that’s probably going to be abandoned in the long run because it’s going to collapse and deteriorate because it can’t be built on water?”
Lauren Wolf and her family have only lived adjacent to the church property since August of 2024 when the initial soil study of the proposed development derailed progress on the project.
She said she understood the need for local affordable housing, but her opposition as a neighbor remained afloat due to stormwater runoff concerns similar to Ellis.
“Until you live in Transylvania County in a temperate rain forest, you really haven’t experienced water in this way,” the Houston, Texas native explained. “My first concern is the Missouri developer who has not developed before in the wettest county in North Carolina, that they don’t fully understand what they are getting themselves into.”
“It’s not that people don’t want housing” she continued. “We want to help our neighbors, but we don’t want our homes flooded out. I’m at the top of the hill, so I’m in a really great spot, but I watch it all go downhill.”
Patricia Wrinkle lives at the bottom of that hill and had been before Brevard City Council multiple times regarding her property and the proposed development to discuss the potential stormwater issues and her concerns had yet to dry given Greenway Development’s new interest.
“According to Mr. Hooper, one of the things you all will be deciding is how a 60-unit low-to-middle income housing development will fit into the community. That’s easy: it will not.” Wrinkle said. “You’re looking at a well-established neighborhood at $300,000 to well over $1 million homes. It doesn’t fit in, in any way shape or form.”
The issue before Brevard City Council Monday night was specifically how city officials should proceed next given the interest from Greenway Development on the project.
City Manager Hooper needed the Council’s permission to extend the date of the initial contract with the church to research the developer more. He also asked that the initial contract stipulation that bidding on the project be competitive be amended so talks might be able to continue with Greenway now that they were the only entity showing interest in the development after the soil issue and its remediation costs had dried up most interest from other developers.
“I’m suggesting that we amend the lease to expire at the end of June 2030,” Hooper explained. “This will give us ample time to do due diligence on Greenway Development Company and if that reveals they are not the right partner perhaps we do another type of pursuit for a suitor. It gives us time to find a qualified development partner that we are comfortable with, whether that’s Greenway or someone else.”
He later clarified that his proposed changes to the contract do not give that company a competitive advantage in the negotiations, but instead the added time for further review might indicate the search for the right developer should continue.
“If they don’t survive this first level of scrutiny and if (UNC School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative) makes the recommendation that we not move forward with them, then I will bring it back and that will be the end of our relationship with Greenway,” he said, further clarifying the contract the minimum number of units required in the development is only 24 structures. “We would then use the remaining three years on the lease to solicit another qualified development partner. It might be a return to a competitive situation. It might be a private negotiation with a Habitat (for Humanity) or some other trusted provider.”
Before the vote on those two aspects of the contract between the city and the church, members of City Council weighed in individually.
“I want to share a couple of numbers that are pretty important to me and the people who are in this room,” Councilman Lauren Wise stated. “One of those numbers is 3,071. That is the number of housing units we are short in this community to house our workforce. We live in a town of 75-hundred people. Think about the relative scale of those two numbers. We have heard from the public for a number of years that housing is critical and that people are desperate for housing.”
“We are talking about housing for teachers, firefighters, people who are working at the grocery store, people who are working at the bar or restaurant,” he continued. “People who are our neighbors, who are our friends. If we want Brevard to remain diverse and interesting and beautiful, we have to look at any opportunity we can for potential housing.”
Councilwoman Patricia Holder was even more direct in her comments.
“We have people who work in Brevard who cannot afford to live here,” Holder said. “We have housing units that are going up for low to moderate citizens in various neighborhoods in Brevard and it seems no one wants them in their community.”
“Low to moderate citizens does not mean that crime rates will go up,” she expounded. “It doesn’t mean that because their socio-economic backgrounds may be different or their race may be different, education may be different, but we’ve seen the report where most of our crime rate comes from and it is not our unhoused community. That was the lower percentage and I think that’s something to consider when we look at this.”
Mayor Pro Tem Aaron Baker reminded his colleagues that there were not many other properties for the city to consider for development of any kind.
“It’s not like we have a lot of available lots like this,” Baker said. “When we have these conversations at City Council, we often hear, ‘Why here?’ and ‘Why not somewhere else?’ We don’t know if this is even going to work or not, but we’re going to have these discussions. The reason we’re even talking about it and the reason I’m going to support having at least three more years to study this is because we don’t have a lot of options.”
“This opportunity to make a dent in the very serious housing crisis that we have just doesn’t grow on trees,” Baker continued. “We have to do as much due diligence as we can to see if we can make it work, particularly when we have land that is being donated. That is a huge cost that will not have to go into the price of these homes that is wiped out at the very beginning. We would be negligent if we didn’t study something like that.”
Councilman Gary Daniel said the concerns about the soil and stormwater runoff raised during public comment were understandable and promised they would be addressed.
“I would posit that they will not be able to put this in without addressing the water and they won’t be able to build this without a solid foundation,” the former developer said. “Our need is dire. We need housing.”
Councilman Dean Lytle said he appreciated the perspectives shared during public comment and wanted to make sure all involved understood whom the proposed affordable housing project would serve.
“I think there is sometimes confusion about what low and moderate housing actually means,” Lytle said before sharing he looked it up with the office of Housing and Urban Development. “In western North Carolina, that means one person at low income is making $43,000 a year with moderate income going up to $65,000. These are folks that have jobs. These are folks that are looking for homes for their kids, and so I think we need to accommodate as best we can. I’ll speak for myself, but I think the rest of the Council shares the fact that we care about existing homeowners as much as new homeowners. I wouldn’t want to endorse anything that would harm an existing homeowner with water or with destroying their property.”
Editor’s note: An astute BrevardBeagle.com reader pointed out Transylvania County’s median combined gross household income before taxes is $66,184, based on the Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 estimate and expressed in 2024 dollars.
When the vote on allowing City Manager Hooper to amend the date of the original contract between the city and the church was tallied, it was unanimous in favor of that change.
When a second vote on making the negotiations non-competitive to directly deal with Greenway Development Group came, it was 4-1 with only Councilwoman Holder voting against that motion; she stated she wanted the process to remain open for other developers to enter the process.
Mayor Maureen Copelof typically only votes in the case of a tie in City Council matters, but at the end of Monday night’s meeting she did weigh in that she was encouraged about the dialogue had earlier in the evening.
“When you look at Brevard when it comes to housing, we have realized this crisis does not have a single solution,” Copelof said. “It will be solved by looking at different options in different places and working creatively in a collaborative environment with a lot of our partners.”