There’s still more than a year to go before the N.C. Department of Transportation starts acquiring right-of-way for the N.C. 107 project in Sylva, but businesses are already making decisions about whether to leave town, and governmental entities are already having conversations about how to entice them to stay. 

MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center will soon begin work toward an alternative vision of the N.C. 107 project in Sylva. 

During an Aug. 6 public hearing on the future of N.C. 107 in Sylva, Kel-Save owner Robert Kelley was the first to speak, delivering an impassioned treatise on the need for a plan that would do more to protect Sylva’s small business community from annihilation as right-of-way is acquired. 

Work will begin next year on a new apartment complex in Sylva aimed at providing housing rates affordable to working-class people. 

The Town of Sylva will take MountainTrue up on its offer to look for a better design for N.C. 107, with MountainTrue’s Asheville Design Center currently working up a scope of work and timeline for the project. 

Marsha Crites doesn’t believe in tough love. She believes in second chances — and even third and fourth chances if that’s what it takes to get someone back on the right track. 

Sylva Town Hall was filled beyond capacity as Mayor Lynda Sossamon called a public forum on the redevelopment of N.C. 107 into session Monday, Aug. 6. 

The upcoming remodel of N.C. 107 through Sylva will be the focus of a special meeting and public hearing planned for 5:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 6, at Sylva Town Hall.

A long-awaited mural is now complete in Sylva, marking the end of the Sylva Public Art Committee’s inaugural project. 

Dismay over preliminary road construction plans that would force 54 Sylva businesses to relocate has sparked a revival of the Jackson County Smart Roads Alliance, the group that in the early 2000s fought off N.C. Department of Transportation plans to build a new highway — dubbed the Southern Loop — connecting Cullowhee to U.S. 74.