Save Downtown Boone

We, the people who sign this petition, support both Appalachian State University and the Town of Boone. We believe that Boone Town officials and ASU administrators must work together to develop a Master Plan for future growth that will encourage ASU development under the law in agreed-upon areas while protecting downtown Boone as a vibrant town center for everyone's use and enjoyment for years to come.

408 signed to date!

The "Save Downtown Boone" Campaign

We all love the Town of Boone & a bustling county seat with a variety of shops, goods, and services, a place where tourists can walk and visit galleries and restaurants, and a magnet location adjacent to Appalachian State University where ASU students can meet friends and professors, have coffee, attend an event at the Jones House, grab a bite to eat, shop for supplies, or take a good long walk. Everyone is welcomed in our wonderful downtown!

We all love Appalachian State University! Many of us are alumni who graduated and stayed on to raise families and start local businesses. Others of us are students attending ASU now. While we believe the important work of ASU must be encouraged and developed, and that ASU has contributed immensely to the cultural and economic health of our town, we also believe that the small independent businesses in downtown Boone should be protected.

We believe that the University is its own type of space, an academic landscape with distinct purposes, ideals, and goals. But Downtown Boone is also a unique landscape with a very different purpose and "feel", and that's the way we'd like to keep it. If King Street becomes encroached upon by ASU academic buildings, along with the academic functions that accompany those buildings, the Town of Boone will slowly disappear as a separate and vibrant space. Downtown Boone must maintain its mix of retail, service, and residential development.

Most people agree that ASU needs a new College of Education building. The Boone Town Council and the Mayor of Boone support ASU's plan to build one, and they support the state's funding for this project.

However, the Town of Boone has rules for all new buildings including academic ones, rules that are in place to protect the health, welfare, and safety of the entire community. These rules include the preservation of some green space around a large building to minimize pavement. These rules include "buffers" of space and vegetation to give adjacent homes some protection from visual and noise pollution. These rules include making sure that enough parking is provided for a large building and that existing traffic volume and patterns are not negatively impacted. These rules include making sure a building is not so tall that Town of Boone fire equipment cannot reach the roof in the case of emergency or evacuation.

These rules were developed logically over many years, with input from all residents of Boone including from ASU students, faculty, and staff. Most importantly, the American ideal of "the rule of law" guarantees that everyone has to follow the same rules. Under the American system, the wealthy and the powerful must abide by the same rules that everyone else must follow.

Unfortunately, the plan submitted by the ASU administration to the Town of Boone for its new Education building meets none of the Town's rules outlined above. The proposal is a very large, tall building that would tower above King Street with no buffering, no green space, and no on-site parking (ASU proposes diverting cars into the new parking deck adjacent to the new library, which is already used at max capacity). The new building is expected to increase traffic on King, College, and Howard streets by an additional 1,200 vehicles a day.

Surely we can all join forces through cooperative planning to do better than this!

For more information or to get involved email: info@savedowntownboone.com