From Staff Reports 

ASHEVILLE — The UNC Asheville stadium proposal unveiled on June 13 confirmed “a a rumor that had circulated for months” — and raised “many more questions,”  the website AVL Watchdog reported on June 23.

“Plans for the property – from impact on local economy to developer’s identity – remain opaque,” AVL Watchdog stated.

“UNCA’s announcement confirmed the university’s  plans to build a soccer stadium on the land currently occupied by 45 acres of woods south of its main campus,” the website stated.

“The plan, developed in collaboration with the amateur soccer club Asheville City SC, calls for a 5,000-seat stadium surrounded by retail and market-rate housing, to be built over the remainder of this decade,” AVL Watchdog noted.

“It would be followed by an as-yet-unannounced project on university property on the other side of Broadway Street. Both properties are part of the school’s Millennial Campus holdings, a designation that allows for public-private partnerships typically outlawed on campuses in the UNC System.

“Just as the plan’s announcement has answered one much-asked question — what is to become of the woods? — it has, in turn, unleashed many more, none of which the school has been keen to answer,’ AVL Watchdog stated.

Further, AVL Watchdog reported on June 23, “UNCA and Asheville City SC are working with a private developer, Chancellor Kimberly van Noort confirmed last week, but neither the school nor the club will identify it...

“The school has boasted job-creation and tax-generation projections, but hasn’t said how it came to those numbers...

“Van Noort said the development will provide badly needed housing but she did not commit to making it affordable, and the school has said nothing about what types of events, outside school athletics and Asheville City SC matches, might take place at the stadium.”

What’s more, AVL Watchdog stated, “UNCA has given an estimate of what the whole project will cost: more than $200 million. Much of the price tag and risk, it says, will be taken on by the developer, which in return will get to design, build and operate the whole development, and to own the retail, housing and parking (though the state will retain ownership of the ground beneath it). But the university will be seeking public subsidies amounting to $29 million, half the projected cost of the stadium. Exactly how it will secure that money is not clear yet, either.”