From Staff Reports 

Asheville has been declared the No. 1 coolest city in America, according to the website Matador.

“Visitors strolling around the cool art deco buildings or finding farm-to-table cuisine and craft beer everywhere they turn may presume Asheville has long been an affluent place,” Matador noted.

“In reality, Asheville suffered decades of shuttered buildings, areas with a full-on ‘ghost-town’ feel. But starting in the mid-’80s, a group of visionary citizens led one of the most amazing economic transformations in the U.S. Forward to 2015: Calendars full of next-level music/arts/culture festivals, boutique hotels popping up all over downtown, and pound for pound the most thriving craft beer and local feed scene in the country.”

Matador stated that it was not looking for the size of a city, but rather its heart, in its “20 Coolest Towns in the U.S.” search.

Another key factor was being a walkable community that has a “strong DIY (do it yourself) or local movements around agriculture/food/drink/farm to table,” as well as “cool natural features close by, and ideally a significant part of their local economy is outdoor recreation.”

Asheville topped other “cool” U.S. cities, including Frisco, Colo.; Laguna Beach, Calif.; North Charleston, S.C.; Sun Valley, Idaho; and Missoula, Mont. (To see the full Matador story, visit http://matadornetwork.com/trips/20-coolest-towns-us/.)

Meanwhile, the recognition is the latest in a number of accolades for Asheville — among the most recent of which was ranking as one of the “7 Most Underrated Food Cities in America” to Frommer’s Travel Guide lauding Asheville as one of the “top destinations” to see in 2015.

“Matador is just discovering what we’ve known all along and what a lot of other media outlets have been pointing to over the years — Asheville is a great destination,” Marla Tambellini, vice president of marketing at the Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau, noted recently.