For the last 20 months, the park system along the French Broad River has been a shell of its former self.
At Carrier Park, tall stalks of bright green horseweed envelop the basketball court and playground. A swing set with no swings stands among a knot of weeds. Bathroom facilities are busted up and fenced off, and light poles and an old scoreboard near the hockey rink still lean at odd angles, mangled in the shape Helene left them when the river rushed through in late 2024.
Now, after a lengthy wait, the city finally has a new vision that parkgoers can look forward to.
In a concept design released last week, the city laid out a roughly $63 million plan to rebuild five miles of riverfront parks with a new guiding philosophy: nature first, recreation within.
The early design seeks to reshape the riverfront with wetlands, rivercane and floodable gathering spaces meant to better withstand future storms. It also resurrects beloved amenities like the velodrome and the dog park, while adding new features such as a food forest, a paddler’s beach and a sculpture meadow.
Dustin Clemens, the city’s Capital Projects Division Manager, said the plan represents a rare opportunity for Asheville’s parks system. All of the parks along the river — which includes Carrier Park, French Broad River Park, Jean Webb Park and an assortment of greenways and river access points — were developed at different times, and rarely with “any focus on long-term resiliency.”
Recovery funding gives the city an opportunity to rebuild the riverfront with a more resilient and cohesive blueprint than the one Helene washed away, Clemens said.
Asheville has set aside more than $21 million in CDBG-DR funds for the project and has been coordinating with FEMA’s Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation Grant Program to fund the rest. After going back and forth with FEMA for almost two years, Clemens said the city has “a really high level of comfort” that the agency will back the project.
As part of its design process, the city has paid Sasaki, a Boston-based design firm, $4.6 million for design and engineering services. The planning team has examined water velocity, soils and vegetation to better understand which stretches of riverbank are most vulnerable to floods.
The process helped the city determine that certain parts of the park system, including a section of French Broad River Park, are particularly vulnerable to high velocity flooding.
“Engineers started to understand the velocity and that even 300 pound boulders were going to be picked up and washed downstream in a large storm event,” Clemens said. “So, that's an area where we just had to put in a much more engineered approach to the riverfront.
The city’s proposed solution? A “floodable terrace lawn,” with cascading rows of benches that are built into the landscape. The seating helps protect the park from extreme floods and offers a place for people to eat lunch or host a small outdoor speaking event, he said.
Flood models also indicated that some of the park’s existing features, like the velodrome, aren’t safe to remain in the 100-year floodplain. The original cycling track was built directly on the site of the former Asheville Motor Speedway. The new plan moves it to higher ground.
The new velodrome design would lose some of its steep banking and become a flatter, more multipurpose loop for cyclists, skaters and runners. And the center of the track could take on a unique new function as a bioretention pond, which would collect and treat stormwater before slowly returning it back to the French Broad River.
Other park amenities, including the basketball court, picnic shelters and restrooms, might also need to be elevated or reconfigured.
“In order to do that, you need to manipulate the grade to raise the elevation of the parks,” Clemens explained. “And when you do that, naturally, you have to lower grades in other locations, which works really great for us because that's an opportunity to create wetlands and to taper the slope to the river bank much more gently than it is right now, which will help reduce erosion.”
As extra reinforcement, the city also plans to add rivercane – an native bamboo that helps stabilize stream banks.
While the city is excited about the new proposal, Clemens cautioned that the plan is still in its early phases. Construction is expected to start in 2027 and continue through at least 2030. And while the broad layout and major park features are taking shape, there are still a lot more details to be pinned down, and unknowns about the plan’s future.
Clemens was able to offer one hint at what people may expect from the food forest, though.
“I think serviceberries are inevitable,” he said, adding that “pawpaws are another interesting fruit” that parkgoers may see down the line.
