Boone Long-Term Growth

[ShagNC]

I'm just wondering if there's any long-term plan for managing the growth of Boone. If App State wants to continue to grow, we need a solution for all the traffic jams and gridlock that occurs about every weekend. Where do you all see the infrastructure in Boone say, 10, 20, 30 years from now?

[Rekdiver]

We will have a wall.....

[mike87]

We will have a wall.....

Florida will pay for it.

[Apple@chin1]

We’ll have flying cars in the future. Think Jetson’s.

[BTK2000]

Depends on how long the town council and residents can continue to stonewall infrastructure development outside city limits.

Boone currently doesn’t allow allow utility hookups outside city limits to prevent the area from getting too developed. So All of the new development happens in the middle of town instead and you get monstrosities like the standard. Then everyone complains about all the development in town and how traffic is horrible so boone doubled down to prevent more development. Rinse wash and repeat

[Rekdiver]

Boone is gonna need more water in the future....even with the new intake.

[appdaze]

Depends on how fast you want to turn in to Asheville. Destroy every hill/mountainside with houses. Traffic will be 10x worse. Locals will be priced out of town. More than likely your cabin/hotel rentals for games would go up. Its a snowball and it doesn't get prettier the bigger it gets.

[appstate24]

Depends on how fast you want to turn in to Asheville. Destroy every hill/mountainside with houses. Traffic will be 10x worse. Locals will be priced out of town. More than likely your cabin/hotel rentals for games would go up. Its a snowball and it doesn't get prettier the bigger it gets.

Dear lord please don’t turn Boone into Asheville. I was born and raised in Asheville. I still live in Buncombe County outside the city, and love where I live, but absolutely HATE the city of Asheville.

GO APPS!

[moonshine]

The town purchased 52 acres across from the intersection of 421 and Bamboo back in 2016. They plan to build a municipality complex and move Boone PD, Public Works and Planning & Inspections east to the new location. I'm not sure how much this will help to alleviate traffic in town but it's my understanding the town wants to grow east towards Deep Gap and essentially give up the King St. downtown area to the university so that App has more of a presence on King St. per the master plan released a few years ago.

https://www.wataugademocrat.com/news/co ... 6a441.html

The university has already began buying up property down Howard St. with the ultimate goal of owning everything on King St. from the College of Ed down to the greasy corner (Daniel Boone Inn).

appstate.edu/_documents/ASU_Master_Plan ... ch2017.pdf (see page 47 for visual concept)

Obviously the price tag would be astronomical (think a billion+) and I'm no engineer so not entirely sure it's feasible but the only mass transit solution I can think of to get more cars off the road, without having to buy up entire neighborhoods and mow some hilltops/mountains down, is to have an elevated train. Start it around Mountaineer Village or the new municipal complex, whenever it gets built, that runs all the way out to the 105 bypass and circles back down 105. This would incorporate most of the hotels, a large majority of the bigger off-campus housing communities (eg. Mountaineer Village, University Highlands, the Cottages and Studio West) and a large number of smaller apartment complexes. Even better if it was able to somehow extend down 321 and cut around the hospital up Deerfield/Wilson Ridge and back over to 421 via Bamboo and do a complete loop around Boone. This is a pipe dream scenario!

[t4pizza]

I actually think a city wide gondola could work for public transportation in Boone. Disney just put one in connecting a new hotel with a couple of their parks. Its a nice way to traverse an area pretty close to the size of Boone. Plus its much quitter than an elevated train and it looks better. It also adds to the mountain town ambiance much like towns in the Alps. And it is a proven method of transportation in extreme weather. Not sure the expense but I would rather see overhead gondolas than an elevated train.

[Neer86]

the only mass transit solution I can think of to get more cars off the road, without having to buy up entire neighborhoods and mow some hilltops/mountains down, is to have an elevated train.

[ah59396]

the only mass transit solution I can think of to get more cars off the road, without having to buy up entire neighborhoods and mow some hilltops/mountains down, is to have an elevated train.

Monorail is more of a Statesboro idea anyways...

[App_in_Maiden]

Depends on how fast you want to turn in to Asheville. Destroy every hill/mountainside with houses. Traffic will be 10x worse. Locals will be priced out of town. More than likely your cabin/hotel rentals for games would go up. Its a snowball and it doesn't get prettier the bigger it gets.

Dear lord please don’t turn Boone into Asheville. I was born and raised in Asheville. I still live in Buncombe County outside the city, and love where I live, but absolutely HATE the city of Asheville.

GO APPS!

Grew up in Arden. Haven’t lived in the area in 14 years but every time I go back to visit family, I avoid Asheville as much as I can. It’s blown up and traffic has become a nightmare. I can’t imagine what the housing market is like there now.

[moonshine]

I actually think a city wide gondola could work for public transportation in Boone.

Same concept, works for me!

[brocktune90]

Oregon Health & Science University/TriMet (public transportation) has a gondola in Portland that connects the hospital on the steep hillside with the offices down by the Willamette river. The aerial tram covers 3300 ft in length and 500 feet of vertical elevation. It's fun to ride and gives great views of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood.

[mike87]

Expand Tweetsie RR and to encourage riders, everyone gets a cap gun when they board the train to shoot Injuns on the way to and from work.

[asu1978]

Incorporate Meat Camp,block the growth.Limit the flights to Bamboo International airport and community pasture.Save The New River(oh,another 70's flashback)

[AppinVA]

the only mass transit solution I can think of to get more cars off the road, without having to buy up entire neighborhoods and mow some hilltops/mountains down, is to have an elevated train.

The surprise being someone other than McLeansville or me posting this.

[Bootsy]

Interesting ideas, and the gondola idea would be pretty cool if it ran across campus. Maybe that would encourage more people to attend games at the Holmes Center. As for me, I'm not sure how excited I'd be riding in a gondola in winter when the wind's usually howling.

On another not, I've often wondered about the Town of Boone's response when App's leadership starts crowing about having 20,000 on-campus students? The town's infrastructure is already strained with the current enrollment. Adding in the weekend footballers, vacationers, Snowbirds, leaf lookers, ski bunnies makes a bad situation worse.

Even if App does buy up everything in their backyard, does that make traffic better or worse on near the Loop? Also, does App have any restrictions on dorm rats bringing cars on campus? They didn't when I was there but that was many many moons ago.

Traffic up here last summer was really heavy, every weekend reminded me of typical fall weekends. So this is definitely not going away. We try to find alternate routes around Boone to avoid traffic when possible. But it's not always easy.

Something has to happen; maybe they can create a Senior year project for our students seeking Community & Regional Planning degrees? It would be cool to see what they come up with as solutions.I'd bet there are no easy answers here, but you've got to start somewhere.

[NoLongerLurking]

I'll be honest, I think Boone growth plateaus to an extent, and Ashe County see's tremendous growth.