River Arts District

The French Broad crested at 24.67 feet in September 2024 — Hurricane Helene — surpassing the 1916 flood's 23.1-foot mark that had driven industry away from this stretch of river for good. Local reports say roughly 80 percent of the district's studios and buildings were damaged or destroyed. Volunteers converged to salvage artworks, clean studios, assist displaced artists. By autumn 2025, most of the galleries, studios, restaurants, and breweries had reopened — what they now call the RAD Renaissance.

The warehouses had been emptying since the 1940s, when repeated flooding finally broke the economics of manufacturing on the French Broad. Artists moved into the abandoned buildings in the 1970s. The Cotton Mill building went up in 1887, making denim and flannel — the fifth large factory along the river. Moses and Caesar Cone took it over in 1893, renaming it Asheville Cotton Mills. Cone closed the factory in 1953. It sat empty for forty years. Most of the 122,000-square-foot complex burned in April 1995 — arson. The Preservation Society of Asheville called the building "the key structure in the area's redevelopment." Eileen and Marty Black bought what remained in 2002, renovated it, and moved in with other artists as Cotton Mill Studios.

In 1987, Karen Cragnolin started RiverLink, a nonprofit aimed at reclaiming the riverfront from its decades as an unregulated dumping site. The 1989 Asheville Riverfront Plan — a joint effort by the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and local conservation advocates — won the American Planning Association's Large Scale Planning Award and set the formal course: mixed-use corridors, greenways, urban parks, artist studios in former industrial shells. In 1992, RiverLink bought Warehouse Studios, converting it to a textile museum with small retail spaces. That same year, Pattiy Torno began renovating buildings she'd bought in 1989, eventually opening them as Curve Studios.

By 2012, 165 artists occupied 19 buildings. The district now holds over 500 working artists. Studios welcome visitors to watch the process — doors open, work happening. In February 2026, USA Today readers voted the River Arts District the No. 1 Best Arts District in the U.S.

The district runs along the east side of the French Broad from the Lyman Street Curve north to the Jeff Bowen Bridge, and along Depot and Roberts streets from Clingman Avenue. The Wilma Dykeman Greenway follows the eastern bank — named for the author whose 1955 book *The French Broad* argued that economic development and environmental protection were not opposed.

Go for the working studios, the street art, the cafés and breweries steps apart. Go because it survived the flood and came back.