Drive a mile off Main Street on Reems Creek Road and you will pass a low industrial building that has sat mostly empty since Balcrank Corporation moved out. For years the only thing growing there was the landscaping around a sign nobody bothered to trim. If you have lived in Weaverville long enough, you probably stopped noticing it.
You should start noticing it again. What happens inside that 18-acre property over the next few months says something about this town that neither the festival calendar nor the real estate listings will tell you on their own: Weaverville is quietly running two different experiments in the same zip code, and they are not the same experiment anyone proposed eighteen months ago.
What the Town Actually Pitched
In December 2024, the Weaverville Economic Development Advisory Committee had a specific problem to solve. Hurricane Helene had just torn through the region, and by WEDAC's own count more than 250 artists had been displaced from studios in Asheville's River Arts District, in Marshall, and elsewhere across the mountains. Someone on the committee looked at the vacant 132,000-square-foot former Balcrank facility and had an idea: what if this became their new home.
The plan, as WEDAC members described it to local reporters, was specific. Twenty windowed studios. Ten windowless ones. A large central area for walk-through gallery displays. WEDAC member Reggie Tidwell talked about wanting the town to grow in an intentional way, keeping the quaintness that makes Weaverville what it is rather than letting growth run away from the community. It read like a tidy civic answer to a real crisis: displaced creatives, an empty building, a town eager to help.
That is not what got built.
What Showed Up Instead
By June 2026, the same building had a new name and a very different floor plan. Property owner Keith Davis rebranded the site as The Dry Ridge Fairgrounds and The Dry Ridge Arcade, and the anchor tenant was not a gallery. It was Ballcrank Arcade & Fairgrounds, a twelve-court indoor pickleball facility, with Davis telling WLOS the warehouse had spent years as pass-through storage that did nothing to generate dollars for the Weaverville community. Ironwood Athletic, a fitness center run by Jeff Boughton, signed on to build out a turf training area in the same complex. An outdoor flea market rounded out the plan.
Local resident and pickleball player Nicholas Waites summed up the neighborhood reaction: twelve courts, a possible bar for hot summer days and cold winter ones, and genuine excitement about having somewhere to play close to home. A July 2026 commercial listing for the property confirmed the shape of the buildout: the pickleball club's build-out was on track to wrap by July, Ironwood's space was targeted for a fall opening, and the outdoor flea market was slated to open sometime over the summer. Spaces from 5,000 to 40,000 square feet were still being marketed to additional retail and restaurant tenants, with names like Big Ivy Brewing and Distilling, Regeneration Station, and Reems Creek Nursery mentioned as interested parties.
Here is the plain comparison, side by side.
| Proposed, December 2024 | Under construction, mid-2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use | Artist studios and gallery space | Indoor pickleball, fitness, flea market |
| Driving need | 250+ artists displaced by Helene | Local demand for recreation and retail |
| Anchor tenant | None named, concept stage | Ballcrank Arcade & Fairgrounds |
| Unit sizes | 20 windowed / 10 windowless studios | 5,000 to 40,000 sq ft flexible spaces |
| Target completion | Not specified | Pickleball courts by July 2026, Ironwood by fall 2026 |
Nobody involved has said the arts hub idea failed exactly. It simply never became the building's identity. The market that showed up to lease space wanted courts and turf, not easels and kiln rooms.
Two Main Streets, Not One
This matters for anyone who lives here because it means Weaverville is building its identity in two separate directions at once, a mile apart, and neither one is waiting for the other to finish.
Downtown, the town's creative economy keeps doing exactly what it has done for nearly two decades. The nineteenth annual Art in Autumn festival returns to Main Street on September 19, with more than 100 juried artists, live music, and the same free family-friendly format that has run every September since the show started. A few blocks over, the Weaverville Tailgate Market keeps its Wednesday, 3 to 6 p.m. rhythm going at the Community Center through October, the same schedule it has held all season. This is the Weaverville that shows up in tourism copy: quaint storefronts, juried craft booths, a Main Street that has not needed reinventing.
A mile away on Reems Creek Road, a completely different kind of amenity is taking shape, one built around courts and turf rather than canvas and clay. It did not exist in anyone's plan until pickleball demand rewrote the pitch. Both things are true about this town at the same time, and neither cancels the other out. If anything, it means residents are getting two new reasons to stay close to home this fall instead of driving into Asheville for a workout or a Saturday market.
The Timeline, If You Are Actually Tracking It
For anyone trying to plan around this rather than just read about it, here is roughly where things stood as of this writing:
- Pickleball courts at Ballcrank Arcade & Fairgrounds: build-out targeted for completion by July 2026, per the property's commercial listing.
- Ironwood Athletic fitness center: build-out in progress, opening targeted for fall 2026.
- Outdoor flea market: opening targeted for summer 2026.
- Remaining space: 5,000 to 40,000 square foot units still being marketed to retail, restaurant, and hospitality tenants as of the most recent listing.
- Art in Autumn: Saturday, September 19, 2026, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Main Street, Weaverville.
- Weaverville Tailgate Market: Wednesdays, 3 to 6 p.m., through October at the Weaverville Community Center.
None of these dates are locked in the way a festival date is. Build-outs slip. But the direction is set, and it is worth knowing before you find yourself driving past a suddenly busy parking lot on Reems Creek Road wondering when that happened.
What This Actually Tells You
Civic plans get proposed with the best intentions and then get rerouted by whoever actually shows up with a lease. That is not a criticism of WEDAC's original idea. It is just what happened here, and it is a useful thing to notice about how a small town like this one actually grows: not from a single master plan, but from whichever version of an idea finds a tenant willing to sign.
Weaverville still gets its craft festival. It still gets its farmers market. It just also gets pickleball courts and a fitness center in a building that almost became something else entirely. Keep an eye on Reems Creek Road this fall. Something is finally moving in.
If you are watching Weaverville for reasons that go beyond a Saturday market or a pickleball reservation, whether you already live here or you are thinking about what a move to this corner of Buncombe County might look like, Dave Noyes has spent over two decades tracking exactly this kind of on-the-ground change across Western North Carolina. Let's Connect.
