Asheville's Montford neighborhood and Dilworth

[voyager12]

I took a drive through Montford up in Asheville on Sunday. Its has many of the same qualities as Dilworth: quaint older houses, beautiful tree canopy. A historic residential district conveniently located to downtown. One advantage Montford has is the presence of neighborhood corner stores. They are great assets to urban neighborhoods and function as community meeting places as well as businesses. Charleston peninsular neighborhoods are also dotted with locally owned corner stores. Dilworth's locally owned corner store is Harris Teeter

[orulz]

I'm not too familiar with Dilworth, but I know Montford quite well.

10 years ago, Montford was not the desirable neighborhood that it is now. You could get a crazy bargain on a fix-er-upper bungalow. Now it's got the same funky charm found in many 1920s era southern, central-city neighborhoods, much like Boylan Heights in Ralegh.

An interesting aside about Montford is Broadway Street. It was widened into a four-lane thoroughfare in the early 90s. The city understood that if they let developers have their way, they'd end up with another monstrocity like Hendersonville Road. That was not a desirable outcome for the gateway to downtown from the north, so they downzoned all the undeveloped land to make development unfeasible, until they get their act together with a corridor plan and some urban zoning requirements with teeth. For now, Broadway remains almost entirely undeveloped.

[DigitalSky]

Montford is a nice neighborhood, it does share similarities with Dilworth