Asheville arena fills critical role for Helene victims

HOOPLESS IN ASHEVILLE: ExploreAsheville.com Arena, shown here during the Maryland-UAB men’s basketball game in November 2023, is working to relocate two neutral-site games this year to other arenas. (Getty Images)

Complex faces heavy financial losses

Chris Corl celebrated his 12th anniversary running Asheville, North Carolina venues this week by camping out at the city’s 7,200-seat arena, along with nine other full-time staffers whose homes remain without power and water two weeks after Hurricane Helene decimated the community.

For Corl, Asheville’s director of community and regional entertainment facilities and general manager of Harrah’s Cherokee Center, which encompasses ExploreAsheville.com Arena, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium and conference spaces, it’s been a long and trying 14 days, but his crew has shone in their efforts to help the city recover and get back on its feet after the devastation.

The complex itself, which sits on a steep hill in downtown Asheville, did not flood and damage was limited to a loading dock door blown off its hinges. But the shutdown of the city’s utilities infrastructure presented more issues with accommodating local residents displaced by the storm.

“Up until the last few days, demand at the arena was from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m., and we’ve all been sleeping there so we can pick up and do whatever we need to do,” Corl said. “I’ve been able to go home for a few hours in the evening to make sure everything’s OK. I don’t have trees down in my yard and that’s not the case for a lot of people.”

Since Sept. 26, the night before Helene slammed Western North Carolina in the early morning hours, resulting in unprecedented flooding across the mountain region, the arena and auditorium has served a critical role for providing shelter and serving as a distribution point for food and water and other supplies to help those in need that have lost their homes in the storm.

“The first few nights (after the storm), we were waiting on the first shipment of water to come to Asheville, keeping somebody up 24/7 to see if the truck showed up, so we could unload it,” he said. “The first shipment arrived at 1 a.m. The house engineer went around, knocking on (meeting room) doors to wake us up, so we could start shipping it out first thing next morning. Water was the No. 1 priority for the city and it was coming to us and we wanted to make sure we were ready for it.”

The complex has canceled all events through October, and is now sorting through November bookings to relocate other events, including two neutral-site men’s college basketball games, UNC Asheville-Appalachian State and Florida State-Western Carolina, plus the four-day Southern Conference women’s volleyball championships. Corl’s working with arenas in Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Charlotte and Greenville, South Carolina to help relocate events.

If the dates don’t work elsewhere, then Harrah’s Cherokee Center will try to move them to 2025 in Asheville, he said.

Bon Secours Wellness Arena officials offered to have someone drive from Greenville to Asheville, 65 miles north, to pick up and clean dirty laundry from staffers living temporarily at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, but Corl said they found a local group in town to complete the task. He said they’re thankful for the offer and for the outpouring of support from the industry in general as the Asheville complex grapples with heavy financial losses from event cancellations.

“We had more than a million dollars in gross revenue slated for October,” Corl said. “It’s going to hurt us. We’re anticipating Q1 and Q2 (of 2025) being a lot softer here. This is typically the time when we would be going on sale with a lot of those events. No promoters want to (book events) for one thing, and we don’t want to go on sale with events right now either. It’s not the right time.”

On that Friday morning the storm hit, Harrah’s Cherokee Center announced bluegrass phenomenon Billy Strings would play a six-night run at the arena in February, but later postponed the onsale. As of this week, officials were still determining when to reschedule the new onsale date.

“In February, we hope Asheville is at a point where we can invite visitors back to town, but we have so many roads and bridges washed out,” Corl said. “That’s the big challenge. Just because we can host an event at the building doesn’t mean the community is ready for it.”

In addition, Christmas Jam, the charitable holiday concert organized over the past 30-plus years by Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule, the stellar guitarist and songwriter who grew up in Asheville, will most likely not occur in December, Corl said.

Some Asheville venues suffered extensive damage or were destroyed by flooding. The front nine holes of Asheville Municipal Golf Course, which just completed a $3 million renovation, and the city’s John B. Lewis Soccer Fields, which sit on a flood plain upstream from the course, were wiped out, Corl said. The public tennis complex had downed trees and ruts in the clay courts that must be rebuilt.

McCormick Field, the city’s historic minor league ballpark, also sits on a hill and is OK except for a few trees down. Construction started on $38 million in stadium upgrades over Labor Day weekend, and the contractor was slated to resume work this week, he said.

Corl provided a general timeline for how the natural disaster unfolded in Asheville and the response by Harrah’s Cherokee Center staff.

On that Thursday night, Asheville officials prepared for the storm by housing about 20 National Guard personnel and 40 people in town from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Swiftwater Response Team. What they experienced before dawn approached as the storm hit the city was beyond belief. They knew there could be flooding, but the flood levels were multiple feet over all-time records, according to Corl.

“It was a wild night,” he said. “About 5 a.m., we shifted into emergency shelter mode. Before lunch hour, we had about 400 people here. National Guard had these big tall vehicles with six-foot tires pulling up to the front door. Kids were showing up in their underwear, pulled out of their beds and homes, soaking wet. It was sad. We tried to find whatever we could to help dry them out and get them in a better place.”

About two hours later on Friday morning, the complex lost power, followed by the city’s water system shut down, Corl said. In some ways, it was reminiscent of the situation the Superdome faced in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

“We had a big shelter with non-working bathrooms and no power which was a challenge,” he said. “I was working in the emergency operations center for the city and we had a few of our staff at the building, coordinating with the city bus system to get everyone in the shelter after the dinner hour, transferred to the WNC Agriculture Center, because they had power. We were able to consolidate mass shelters in town.”

Over the past two weeks, Harrah’s Cherokee Center has transitioned from serving as distribution points for shelter and supplies to handing those responsibilities over to FEMA and state emergency management officials. Facilities run by nonprofits such as United Way are now housing displaced residents. To this point, the complex is still feeding first responders, numbers from that have run as high as 900 per meal.

“We’re waiting for our next mission,” Corl said. “What I’ve learned from all this is that I’ve gone to other markets after a storm to help run a mass shelter at an arena and convention center, but I’ve never been part of it during the destruction. The images you see in the news doesn’t do it justice. When you see it in person, you realize how bad these hurricanes are.”