The Southern Highland Reader

Every town worth its grinds needs a coffee magnate, and now Sylva has one.

John Bubacz, owner of Signature Brew Coffee Company and Bubacz’s Underground on Main Street has purchased the competition — Shot in the Dark Cafe — from Lucy Silverman and Justin Goble.

Silverman and Goble were recently married, and she has taken work in Durham. Goble’s departure will be felt on both ends of Main Street, as he is also a workhorse reporter for the Sylva Herald newspaper.

Bubacz, who roasts his own joe at Signature Brew, will reopen Thursday, January 21.

“I’ll move my coffee roaster up there in due time,” says Bubacz, “but we’ll immediately offer fresh pastries, organic fair trade coffee and espresso, snacks and grab-and-go lunch. We will be open 7am-6pm Monday-Thursday with weekend hours TBA.”

Bubacz opened Wha Cha Want Bodega on the WCU campus in 2001, and combined that business with Sylva’s Juice Junkie in 2002. He moved the whole shebang to its current location at the Underground in 2006.

Once, about ten years ago, I was having lunch at a Sylva restaurant called the Spring Street Cafe.

From my table I caught a quick glimpse down an unlikely sightline — framed just so by some plants and interior drapes, down a hallway, and through a cracked door — of a baker’s table. On the table was a wedding cake, and the cake was being carefully decorated by two hands. The hands were all I could see.

The owner of those baker’s hands would one day become my wife, and we would come to own a house across the street from the cafe, where we live today with our three girls.

Spring Street, which has been closed for nearly a year, will soon open again under the ownership of former employee Emily Elders, a Cullowhee native. One of her ideas for an advertisement is a group shot of kids that have sprung from the many friends that have surrounded the cafe for the past ten years. (It better be a big ad).

All along, Spring Street Cafe has held a particular niche in Sylva’s lively-for-a-small-town restaurant scene.

First, in the nineties, it was City Lights Cafe, a small eatery attached to the bookstore upstairs, and under the proprietorship of Joyce and Allen Moore.

About a decade ago it was expanded into it’s full service self by Faye Holliday, whose culinary flair traces at least a little of its lineage to Asheville’s Hector Diaz, owner of the eclectic and popular eateries Salsa’s, Zambra and others.

Holliday and her unusually loyal (for food service) crew built a strong following through wild explorations of fresh local and world cuisines, and Tuesday night old time jam sessions and Sunday brunches were de rigueur among a certain Sylva social set.

Faye’s slow food influence can now be felt in a number of kitchens in the southern mountains.

Holliday sold the place to Lisa Agee a few years back, and Agee, whose desserts were quite a calling card, closed her business last spring, a victim of the economic malaise.

Enter Ms. Elders. As a single mom, a student and director of the Jackson County Greenways Project, you’d think she might have enough on her plate to worry about what’s on everybody else’s, but she’s game. She and a band of volunteers have been sprucing the place up in preparation for a January 26 opening.

“I’m very much inspired by Faye’s ideals,” Elders says. “We’ll be as local and as organic as we can be. My goal right away is to keep price points down, and bring back a lot of the items people remember and love.”

Elders has assembled a crew of former employees and a front-of-the-house manager that’ll be familiar to Sylva folks: Michael Redmon has been a longtime employee of Annie’s Bakery.

Several of the specifics that fans of the place remember will return, sushi Wednesdays and Sunday brunch among them. In addition, Elders and new City Lights Bookstore owner Chris Wilcox hope to develop a more symbiotic relationship than the two businesses have shared before. The cafe’s hours will be much closer to those of the bookstore, and the bookstore will open on Sunday afternoons.

Spring Street will hit the ground running, events-wise. Elders will host a Chamber of Commerce business after hours on January 28th, and will open for business the next day.

Book-signings and an art opening are already on the schedule for February.

DILLSBORO–The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld on Tuesday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling that the Dillsboro Dam should be removed.

From an Asheville Citizen-Times staff report:

The court today denied Jackson County’s petition for review of FERC’s July 2007 order allowing Duke Energy to remove the historic dam.

Read more here, from Lynn Hotaling at the Sylva Herald.

SYLVA–City Lights Bookstore, a retail anchor in downtown Sylva since the early eighties, is changing hands.

Owners Joyce and Allen Moore are selling the store to longtime employee Chris Wilcox, effective January 1.

Moore informed her customers of the change in a letter written on Monday, in which she wrote, in part:

As I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world.

The Moores bought the store from local author Gary Carden in 1986, and moved it from Main Street to its current location at the corner of Spring St. and East Jackson St. a few years later.

In her letter, Moore also wrote:

Chris and his employees will also be facing many changes.  Some are beginning to affect not only the face of the bookselling world, but even the book itself.  It will take hard work, a constant acquisition of new information, flexibility and most of all, your continuing support to carry City Lights into the new decade.

Many independent bookstores across the country are closing in these economic hard times, but you have continued to say with your dollars that having a real bookstore in Sylva is important to you.  It is essential that you continue that commitment, not only to City Lights, but to all the independent businesses in downtown Sylva.

2009-12-18: Fans and foes of a controversial youth dance club in Sylva aired their thoughts before the Sylva Town Board Thursday. Opponents of “Club Offspring” provided a petition asking the board to investigate the business and to consider closing it. Proponents said the controversy is overblown, and provided a petition of their own. Either way, said Mayor Maurice Moody, we have no evidence that any laws have been broken, but we’ll keep an eye on it.

The dust-up arose after the club, which doesn’t serve alcohol or admit patrons over the age of 24, circulated a flyer that invited teens to come to the venue “as wasted as you want”.

Asheville television WLOS spent the day in Sylva — seeming a little more breathless than the story deserved — and aired images from the club’s MySpace page that showed scantily-dressed teens. One club-goer’s response, in so many words, was that when you dance for hours at a time you need a way to cool off.

More here from WLOS.
More here from the Asheville Citizen-Times.
More here from the Sylva Herald (link will expire in one week)

Sylva teen club draws ire

A teen and young adult party club doing business in Sylva has raised the ire of parents by circulating sketchy flyers that urge kids to “come as wasted as they want” to the venue, located near the intersection of NC 107 and Business 23 downtown.

“Club Offspring”, which does not serve alcohol, advertises that it allows “no adults”.

The flyers, which made their way into the local high school, also made their way into the hands of a local parent, Brian Bartel, who went to Asheville television WLOS with the story and is circulating a petition that he plans to present to the Sylva town board on Thursday. The petition asks the town to shut the club down.

It’s unlikely that the board will have legal standing to do so, whether or not it has the inclination.

Here’s the story from WLOS, in which the station notes that the club’s 22-year-old owner is in the slammer for statutory rape.

More here from Justin Goble at the Sylva Herald.

Bryson City pub owner cited in underage drinking death

The Asheville Citizen-Times Josh Boatwright writes that Charles Hutchinson, owner of Mickey’s Pub in downtown Bryson City, served numerous drinks to an underage patron on May 17, and that that patron left and promptly drove into a nearby building, killing himself.

Hutchinson faces a criminal citation and the suspension of his liquor license.

MURPHY–Dwight Otwell, staff writer for the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, reported recently about efforts made by mountain farmers to diversify and to profit from niche crops.

Agriculture has dwindled rapidly in the mountains, where farmers face not only the standard competition from industrial farming, but the added challenge of a lack of flat land.

Otwell’s lead:

Farmers who make their entire livelihood from working the land are almost a relic from the past in Cherokee County.

As the number of large farms has steadily dwindled, a new type of farmer has emerged, one who can forge a living from an acre or two growing for a specialty market.

He goes on to interview a vintner, a dairy farmer and vegetable farmers, all of whom are using innovative methods to make their famrs work.

Another excerpt:

A new type of market is using the Internet to sell products to high-end restaurants or consumers. The main market for this area is Atlanta.

The idea is that a chef gets the fresh produce he wants the next day, Wood said. The chef knows the farm the produce comes from and he trusts it. A person with as little as a half acre of land willing to grow specialty crops can make $20,000 to $30,000 an acre.

Read Otwell’s story in the Scout here.

REGIONAL–Asheville blogger Ashvegas laments the news that the Hendersonville newspaper, the Times-News (a New York Times paper), will soon move to its new offices in a shopping center.

Right there between Goodys and the Shoe Show, we imagine. Oh, wait, Goodys is history.

Here’s Ashvegas’s lead:

Yes, here’s the announcement we’ve been expecting: the Hendersonville Times-News is moving its downsized operation into smaller space in a shopping center. Over the past couple of years, the New York Times-owned newspaper has reduced staff, moved the printing of the newspaper to South Carolina and made other cost-cutting measures.

And here’s his post.

SYLVA–The holidays are here and so is the spirit of giving!

The Downtown Sylva Association is partnering with The Community Table for a Food Drive from December 1st-23st. Visit some of your favorite downtown hotspots to make a donation that will make a difference at the same time.

Papou’s Wine Shop & Bar, Annie’s Bakery, Yesterday’s Tree, Lulu’s on Main, Friends of the Library, Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, Bubacz’s Underground, Heinzelmannchen Brewery will have a box identified for your donation at their location.

Check our website, www.downtownsylva.org, as this list of merchants will grow in the coming days.

New life for the old post office

It’s hard to think of much that would bring more life to a quiet building than a dance academy, and that’s just what’s coming to Sylva’s old post office, located on Landis St., and closed since spring.

Triple Threat Performing Arts Academy is moving from its current location adjacent NAPA Auto Parts on the Asheville Highway into the old post office. Renovations there are ongoing, and owner Valerie Tissue hopes to crank up in March. Downtown merchants will take note; the academy has over 230 students, whose parents and assorted caretakers have a lot of time on their hands between drop-off and pick-up.

Spring St. Cafe to reopen

Spring St. Cafe would celebrate its ten-year anniversary in March — if it were open. And apparently it might be, as owner Faye Holliday and space-owners Joyce and Allen Moore are close to reaching terms with an interested party …

Downtown wayfinding system

Downtown merchants — particularly the ones who aren’t directly on Main St. — have long complained about the lack of a standardized signage system for the downtown area. Many have resorted to various sandwich boards placed here and there, bringing about the occasional visit from the sign ordinance folks. Town Manager Adrienne Isenhour has been working this year to implement the needed system, and her efforts got a boost this week with a $9,000 municipal grant from county government.

Downtown Sylva Association; another successful parade

From the DSA: Downtown Sylva celebrated its annual Christmas parade Saturday with a great turn out and amazing floats that showed the time, effort, and talent that went into making such a special presentation. Wilmot Baptist Church won “Best in Show” and $200.  Honorable mention was a tie and goes to Yesterday’s Tree and Heritage Christian Academy.

STATEWIDE-The Raleigh News and Observer reports that the state of North Carolina will urge 78,000 state residents whose unemployment benefits recently expired to re-apply for extended benefits recently approved by congress.

An excerpt:

The N.C. Security Employment Commission is preparing to send out the letters this month as it begins administering the extension, which increases benefits by up to 20weeks. Congress boosted maximum jobless benefits five weeks ago from 79 weeks to 99 weeks in the midst of the nation’s most severe economic recession in decades.

Read the story here.

STATEWIDE–A former North Carolina Department of Transportation official from the eastern end of the state was sentenced to over three years in prison yesterday for taking kickbacks from an excavation company.

Dalton Alligood Jr., a former district engineer for the DOT, received 10% in cash from contracts funneled to the company between 2004 and 2006.

Governor Beverly Perdue has stated her intention to be tougher on corruption at the DOT at all levels.

More on Alligood here from AP via the Charlotte Observer.

STATEWIDE–The North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved a 7 percent rate hike for Duke Energy customers.

The hike will increase Duke’s annual revenue by $315.2 million. Duke originally sought a $488 million increase in rates, but the Commission staff had argued that a $183 million increase for Duke would be sufficient. The final amount represents a compromise.

The rate hike will be phased in, with Duke customers seeing an initial 3.27% hike next month.The balance will come in January of 2011.

The hike is controversial, in part, because Duke plans to use part of the revenue to pay for its new Cliffside Steam Station, a large, coal-driven plant west of Charlotte. Cliffside is opposed energetically by environmentalists.

Read more here, from the Charlotte Business Journal.

REGIONAL–The Asheville Citizen-Times has announced the launch of WNC LINC, a “partnership with five Western North Carolina Web-based news and information groups as part of a new initiative to enhance local news coverage and seek out innovative ways to collaborate among organizations.”

The Southern Highland Reader is part of the WNC LINC effort, along with AskAsheville.com (www.askasheville.com), the Artful Parent (artfulparent.typepad.com), the Montford Neighborhood Association and UNC Asheville.

Read the Citizen-Times story here.

Read our earlier news post here.

REGIONAL–The governing board of MedWest Health System voted unanimously Tuesday to accept Carolinas HealthCare System’s recommendation and appoint Mike Poore as the chief executive officer for the affiliated hospitals of Haywood Regional Medical Center, Harris Regional Hospital and Swain County Hospital. The system will enter into a management agreement with Carolinas HealthCare System beginning in January, 2010.

Mike Poore

Poore, who was hired as CEO of Haywood Regional Medical Center in October 2008, will assume the new position effective January 1, 2010.

“I’m excited about the challenges of bringing these two organizations together to better serve all of our communities. By integrating the resources of WestCare, Haywood Regional and Carolinas HealthCare System we will greatly enhance the healthcare of our region,” states Mr. Poore.

“The new MedWest CEO will be very busy over the next few months working with the new organization and with Carolinas HealthCare System to develop a management action plan to be presented to the MedWest board. The transitional process will take approximately six months,” said Mark Clasby, chairman of the MedWest board.

Fred Alexander, board vice chairman, stated, “Mike Poore has the experience and expertise to lead this system as it grows and enhances healthcare in the area. He has the full backing and support of the board and we look forward to the work that needs to be done.”

“I would like to congratulate Mike Poore on his appointment to CEO of MedWest Health System. This system, with support of Carolinas HealthCare System, will ensure that quality healthcare continues to be delivered to the citizens of Western North Carolina for years to come. I am very proud of our strong, capable and compassionate WestCare staff and know they will remain committed to providing excellent patient care. I would ask the WestCare staff to give Mike the same level of commitment and dedication they have always provided,” Mark Leonard, CEO of WestCare Health System.

The MedWest Board of Directors is made up of 14 members and has equal representation from both Haywood Regional Medical Center and Harris Regional and Swain County Hospitals. Two physicians each from Haywood and WestCare will also serve on the board of directors.

Poore served as senior vice president and administrator for Wellstar Douglas and Wellstar Paulding hospitals and the Paulding Nursing Facility in Atlanta, Ga., from 2007 to 2009; and as vice president and administrator for Douglas Hospital from 2004 to 2007. He served as the administrative director of ancillary services and vice president of operations at DePaul Medical Center from 1998 to 2004. Prior to that he was an administrator of support services at Erlanger Health Systems and was an administrator at Stewart Webster Hospital in Richland, Ga.

“An organization will flourish when you develop ownership and pride among employees. I believe in giving employees the tools needed to do their job, removing any barriers, and then getting out of the way and letting them do their job,” Poore said.

He is originally from Mobile, Al. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Services Administration at Auburn University and a Master of Business Administration degree at the University of South Alabama. He is a Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. He and his wife, Penny, have two sons and one daughter.

“I would like to thank the MedWest board for their hard work to ensure a strong system that can offer better service to all communities served by the newly integrated network,” said Michael C. Tarwater, CEO of Carolinas HealthCare System. “CHS looks forward to being actively involved in those communities, and responsive to community needs, once the new management agreement has taken effect.”

Mr. Clasby said the MedWest board’s goal is for the management agreement to become effective in January. The management services agreement will help to ensure access to broader resources, including sharing best practices in areas such as financial management, staff recruiting, safety and quality improvement, he said.

Haywood Regional Medical Center (www.haymed.org) was established in 1927. The current facility opened in 1979 and is licensed for 170 acute care beds. It is the third largest employer in Haywood County with more than 900 employees.

WestCare Health System (www.westcare.org) was formed in February 1997 when Harris Regional Hospital and Swain County Hospital combined to develop a full spectrum of health services. WestCare employs almost 1,200 full and part time employees and has a medical staff of more than 90 physicians representing 22 specialties.

Carolinas HealthCare System (www.carolinashealthcare.org) is the largest healthcare system in the Carolinas, with 29 affiliated hospitals in North Carolina and South Carolina.

REGIONAL–From Onvia, by way of the North Carolina Economics blog, here’s a nice interactive map of federal stimulus spending in North Carolina. Click on counties to read a summary of projects.

The short take:

• Jackson: 9 projects at a value of $3,811,725
• Swain:  12 projects at a value of $15,667,128
• Graham: 3 projects at a value of $1,260,556
• Cherokee: 9 projects at a value of $98,949,966
• Clay: 3 projects at a value of $25,806,709
• Macon: 6 projects at a value of $6,220,760

SYLVA–We noted recently Verizon’s plans to sell its land-line phone business in 14 states, including North Carolina, to a smaller company called Frontier.

It’s an interesting subject because Verizon has done this before in other parts of the country, and the results have sometimes been tough on rural consumers. The smaller companies don’t have the wherewithal to service expensive rural land-line networks, and so leave consumers with worse service than they had before — or go completely belly-up.

Verizon picked up our area several years ago in a package deal that included the Charlotte region, and some customers argue that the company has always been indifferent to its customer’s needs in the southern mountains.

Well, one Reader reader reports that this just isn’t so. He got some paperwork from Verizon that said, in so many words, that if the company leaves the region before his contract is up, they won’t charge him for terminating his contract early. Thoughtful!

STATEWIDE–As I touched on here and here, North Carolina’s state health plan will soon be closely tied to the behavior of the people enrolled in the plan. The state will penalize those who are overweight, who smoke, and so forth, and will be among the first few states in the nation to do so.

Some in the media argue that tying behavior to health insurance costs is sensible, although Adam Linker at NC Policy Watch isn’t so sure.

He argues, among other things, that the use of any type of tobacco product will be treated the same as the use of cigarettes, despite varying health risks (he uses cigars as an example). Linker also points out what he sees as a fundamental unfairness of the plan: that low-wage state workers — who are statistically more likely to be in poor health than higher paid workers — are “punished” more severely, because the programs costs aren’t on a sliding scale.

“Imposing a penalty for smoking is one thing. Crippling family budgets for using tobacco is quite another,” Linker writes.

He also points out that the expense of the state plan for lower-paid workers is quite high.

Read more here at the NC Policy Watch blog.

Another story from the Asheville Citizen-Times here.

NATIONAL/STATEWIDE–A federal stimulus program designed to help keep the unemployed insured is phasing out.

The lead from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

At a time when the unemployment rate tops 10 percent, many unemployed Americans will no longer qualify for federally subsidized health insurance.

That’s because a nine-month health-insurance subsidy that was part of the federal stimulus legislation began to end Monday for many who have relied on it. As many as 7 million people were eligible for the subsidy in 2009, according to government statistics.

People who have not used up their nine-month subsidy will be able to finish it. But no one laid off after the end of the year will be able to start using the subsidy. Parts of the stimulus legislation dealing with the insurance coverage end Dec. 31.

Read the story here.

REGIONAL–The southern mountains’ regional daily, the Asheville Citizen-Times, has learned of another round of cost-cutting measures from its corporate owner, Gannett.

Jason Sandford at the Mountain Xpress gives a rundown, here.

Here’s an excerpt:

Gannett cut 10 percent of its workforce in 2008 and slashed another 3 percent this past summer. At the Citizen-Times, that has translated into about two dozen layoffs. Another 60 employees lost their jobs at the newspaper’s printing plant in January when the company closed down its press. The newspaper is now printed in Greenville, S.C.

SYLVA – Dogwood Women’s Health welcomes Swa Sapp, registered nurse and licensed esthetician to the practice, joining Dr. Graeme Potter, Cindy Noland, CNM and Maggie MacRae, CNM.

Swa provides skincare services including a wide variety of peel strengths and types, facials and hygienic waxing for women and men in a medical setting. She provides support and education for clients as part of the customized skincare her practice offers. She is the exclusive provider of BION skin care products in Western North Carolina.

Swa has been providing skincare services in Sylva for 11 years. She graduated from Duke University and also holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Certification in Esthetics from Haywood Community College.

Dr. Potter, Noland and MacRae provide OB/GYN services at Dogwood Women’s Health in Sylva, Bryson City, Franklin and Robbinsville. Swa practices in the main office in Sylva, on the campus of Harris Regional Hospital.