James Green
2009 Winner
RiverLink's
RiverBusiness Award
Green's Mini-Mart
We Salute You
Each year the RiverLink Board of Directors selects a business or businesses in the Wilma Dykeman RiverWay to honor for their contributions to the rebirth of the French Broad River as a destination where everyone can live, work and play.
The urban riverfront in Asheville was the city's industrial corridor at the turn of the last century. The arrival of the railroad in 1880 made it possible for factory owners to send and receive the materials needed to operate their factories.
But the river, especially the areas known as Chicken Hill and Southside, housed many families in addition to the factories. Some of the residents worked in the mills and lived in mill village houses. Many of the residents worked for the railroad. The African American Community had a strong presence in this area as well. Many of the black owned businesses and homes were located near the river and "Nasty Branch" - which unfortunately was very well named.
Things changed in the 1960's after urban renewal came to Southside and destroyed single family homes and black owned businesses. Southside suffered the double whammy of urban renewal and forced integration. The businesses that catered to the black community closed and never reopened after urban renewal redeveloped Southside. Families who had lived in the neighborhood were moved to public housing projects. In fact, the very first publicly funded project for public housing was here in Asheville ---on Southside - and the word "project" has become synonymous with public housing.
Frances and James Green always greet customers by name at Greens' Mini-Mart on Depot Street in Asheville
The Army took James to Europe. He spent four years in Frankfurt Germany where he earned a Stationary Engineer degree. After leaving the Army, Mr. Green moved to Cleveland to be closer to his family and find work. It wasn't long before the Army veteran found a good job as a stationary engineer and started a long career with the Cleveland Board of Education and the City of Cleveland as a certified and licensed engineer.
It was in Cleveland that he met the love of his life, Frances Young, a student at Finn College, which is now Cleveland State University. They were married in 1961 after she graduated from College. Frances and James have two sons, Kevin and Keith and 5 grandchildren. Both of their sons graduated from Moorehouse College. Frances and James always knew that a good education would be essential for their boys and they worked hard to provide it.
By 1983 Mr. Green had accumulated enough funds in his retirement account to come back to Asheville and start a business in the neighborhood where he grew up. He and Frances opened Greens' Mini-Mart. The neighborhood store includes a deli with the best fried chicken and fish in the city and a laundry and gas station.
Green's Mini-Mart was the very first business, black or white, to come back and invest in the neighborhood since the urban renewal of the 1960's. Mr. Green bought the land with his retirement funds and turned to Clyde Savings Bank, today HomeTrust, for a loan to start his business. According to Mr. Green, "The people at HomeTrust then and now made it possible for me to start up this business and to keep it going."
Money was so tight in the early days that the Green's couldn't afford an alarm system. Many nights he just slept in the store until they established their reputation as a community asset. Over the years Greens' Mini-Mart has employed about 100 neighborhood families. The Greens' business is an anchor and a meeting ground providing neighborhood interaction and stability.
The Green's trusted their neighbors and would often provide employment for neighborhood parents or someone on probation and in need of work. To this day in a neighborhood dominated by subsidized public housing units, Greens' Mini-Mart has never been robbed or broken into. And it is to this day a family run business. Mrs. Green passed in 2007. Before she became ill she was at the store every day, right by James' side. She always kept the books and paid the bills and greeted every customer by name.
Kevin Green, their oldest son, is with First Citizens Bank in Asheville but can sometimes still be found behind the counter. Keith, their youngest, helps out at the store and uses his BA in Management to help run the business. This is a great family that invested in a neighborhood revitalization project because it was the right thing to do. As Mr. Green says, "I started this business not to get but rich, rather to help lift up the community in which I was born."
RiverLink is proud to honor Mr. James Green and Greens' Mini-Mart on Depot Street as a true River Business. His efforts in the neighborhood span a lifetime and have helped make the French Broad River a better place for everyone to live, work and play.
Prior recipients of the RiverLink RiverBusiness Award include 12 Bones Smokehouse, Clingman Avenue Café, The Phil Mechanic Building/ Flood Studios and AvL Technologies. |
|
Give A Gift of Forever
Give a gift that supports your lifestyle and need for open space and greenways, good water quality, recreation, health, sound long-term economic development, transportation, education and flood prevention
YOU CAN OWN AND GIVE A PIECE OF THE GREENWAY
FOR JUST $50
 ~ Put your best foot forward; purchase a Deed of Support for the Wilma Dykeman RiverWay, 100% of
the proceeds used to connect the dots and RiverLink missing pieces of the RiverWay.
Are you stumped for holiday gift ideas? Visit the French Broad River Yacht Club Tackle Shop, RiverLink's online store, at
~ RiverLink membership - the gift that keeps giving, by becoming a member of RiverLink, you become a defender of the river.
~ A Waterproof River Access Guide; the perfect present for the paddler in the family, filled with pieces of historical information on the French Broad River, as well a detailed map of the FBR access points.
~ The French Broad by Wilma Dykeman; a great gift for the bookworm! A wonderfully written piece of non-fiction that captures the natural and human diversity of the Asheville region.
Find all these gifts and more at www.riverlink.org: Give a gift that keeps giving. Give a gift that supports and sustains the water you drink.
RiverLink is also partnering with Greenraising, an earth-friendly fundraising organization where all items sold not only support the environment, they support various non-profits across the country, including RiverLink. From December 3rd to 15th, 40% of sales generated online will go directly to RiverLink when you choose RiverLink as an affiliate! Click here for more information. Happy Shopping and Happy Holidays! |
|
RiverLink Volunteer River Cleanups
Rainbow Mountain Community School students, decked out in fashionable waders, remove trash from their adopted section of Moore Branch along State Street. November River Cleanup Tally
77 Volunteers
125 volunteer hours
55 Bags of Trash
6 tires
A big thank you to the following Adopt-a-Stream teams and volunteers for their time and efforts during October river cleanups!
Asheville Catholic School Adopt-a-Stream Team
French Broad River
Hanger Hall Adopt-a-Stream Team
French Broad River
UNCA Outdoors Program Adopt-a-Stream Team
Hominy Creek
The Underground Church Adopt-a-Stream Team
Swannanoa River
Rainbow Mountain Community School
Omega Program Adopt-a-Stream Team
Moore Branch
St. Mark's Church Youth Group
Adopt-a-Stream Team
Glenn Creek
Upcoming River Cleanups open to the Public
(for more details please go to Upcoming Events above)
Saturday December 5th noon
French Broad River Cleanup with Diamond Brand Adopt-a-Stream Team
|
Busy Month For Watershed Education!
It's been another great month for watershed education at RiverLink. The staff at RiverLink has been very busy delivering lessons to schools all over the French Broad River watershed. We reached 270 more students this November than we did in November of last year! RiverLink had the opportunity to visit these awesome schools this month:
-Evergreen Community Charter
-Francine Delaney School
-Odyssey Community School
-Fairview Elementary School
-Creative Village Childcare
These schools got to experience lessons such as the Enviroscape, "River of Words and Arts", "Macroinvertebrate Mayhem" and "Kids In The Creek".
Students at Evergreen Community Charter
learn about watersheds on the Enviroscape
model.
Don't worry- it's not too late to sign up for FREE Watershed Education at your school! Click HERE to take a look at our lessons. Head's up-due to immanent approach of Winter, we will not be doing anymore "Kids In The Creek" lessons until Spring of 2010. Please contact RiverLink's Education Coordinator Rebecca Childress at education@riverlink.org or 828-252-8474 x111. |
Volunteer Spotlight Shines
on
Mark Ambtman
Mark Ambtman began volunteering with RiverLink in September and has already logged more than 20 hours assisting us with some of our restoration projects. As a professional landscape architect, Mark has been invaluable in helping us to coordinate restoration projects along the banks of the French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers. He has been teaching our volunteers to identify invasive species and to remove them. When the kudzu is gone, the native trees can breath again.
Mark, on left, leads team of Rainbow Mountain Community School students, teachers and parents during Moore Branch Restoration project.
Mark moved to Asheville in 2001 from Toronto, Canada. While he has no family in the area, he feels that the great people he has met here are like family. When asked why he wanted to volunteer with RiverLink, Mark said, "I see and hear about the great work RiverLink is doing in the places that I live, work and play. I thought it was a better idea to stop watching and listening and start doing." We couldn't have said it better. When not volunteering with RiverLink to free the trees, Mark enjoys biking, exploring the mountains, eating at Asheville's latest and greatest restaurants and fixing up his house and of course, more volunteering.
Thank you Mark! The next Volunteer Spotlight could be on you! To learn more about volunteering with RiverLink, please come to our Volunteer Information Sessions the 2nd Wed of each month at 10am and 5pm at our offices. Please contact Rachel Doebber, the Volunteer Outreach Coordinator, at volunteer@riverlink.org or 828-2852-8474 ext. 118 to RSVP for the information session. | |
|
|
Quick Links
River News
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Upcoming Events
12/03-12/05/09
12/03/09
We need to sell 10 tickets to benefit. 7-11pm with raffle to benefit RiverLink
12/04/09
3pm at RiverLink offices. FREE - RSVP's required.
12/05/09
starting at noon at Ledges Whitewater Park
12/09/09
10am & 5pm at RiverLink offices. RSVP's required.
12/11/09
3pm at RiverLink offices. FREE - RSVP's required.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
SAVE THE FRENCH BROAD
We cannot be sustainable without clean water - with buffers, greenways and density, protecting water quality and the Wilma Dykeman RiverWay can be achieved.
Join us January 12th City Council Meeting at
5pm at Asheville City Hall to prevent the reduction of streamside buffers. 
Stream buffers are the easiest most affective way to protect water quality, drought and flooding.
Share your views - email the Asheville City Council or write a letter to the editor
Click here for more information and sign RiverLink's petition!
|
WIN up to $1200
Last Save the French Broad River Raffle drawing will be on January 15th with prize package valued at $1,200! Tickets are just $10 each.
Win an ENO DoubleNest Hammock, MSR
Elbow Room 2 Tent, Osprey Kestrel Technical Backpack, pair of Ahnu Tilden Sandals, Watershed ZipDry Largo Tote, pair of La Sportiva Mountain Running Shoes and more! Save the French Broad River raffle tickets make great holiday gifts - one size fits all!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
 Support RiverLink and enjoy your coffee all in one cup!
RiverLink's French Broad River Coffee Blend from locally based roaster, Blue Smoke Coffee, is now available at these fine establishments in the Asheville area where $1 from every bag sold goes directly to RiverLink.
- Greenlife Grocery on Merrimon Ave - featured at the coffee counter during December. Get a cup to go and also buy a bag of beans of the French Broad River Blend.
- Grove Corner Market in West Asheville on Haywood
- Red Bike Deli in the Grove Arcade
- New Bridge Market at 1311 Tunnel Rd in East Asheville area
- Laurey's Gourmet on Biltmore Ave near the Orange Peel
- Sunshine Pharmacy in Black Mountain
You can also purchase the coffee blend online from Blue Smoke Coffee.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
We want your input for the new Karen Cragnolin Park!
If you have some ideas about this "missing link" in the Wilma Dykeman, click here to take the survey and give us your suggestions too!
Click here to purchase a Deed of Support to help us continue to make the Wilma Dykeman RiverWay Plan a reality!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
|
Asheville NC News, November 3.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
RiverLink Selling Rain Barrels!
For only $60, you can have your own rain barrel - save water and support RiverLink!
RiverLink's rain barrels are recycled 55 gallon white barrels and are the best value in town.
RiverLink's French Broad Riverkeeper Hartwell Carson, center, works with NC Outward Bound participants to construct rain barrels.
To purchase your rain barrel please call us at 828-252-8474, ext 115 or visit our website at www.riverlink.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
River Fact
The French Broad River has several characteristics that are unusual for rivers of the southern Appalachians. Due to the nature of southeastern Blue Ridge topography, the river flows in a northward semicircle, cradled between the Tennessee Valley Divide and the Pisgah Ridge. Beginning at the junction of its first three major tributaries, the North, West, and East forks, the river flows first to the northeast, then turns north to Asheville, and finally sweeps to the northwest toward Tennessee.
River Photo
Untitled by Aden Pillar, Asheville High School 11th Grader, RiverLink Earth Day River of Words & Art Contest Honorable Mention Bookmark Category.
River Poem
"Forever in Blue"
by Sarah Smith, Evergreen Community Charter School 7th grader, RiverLink Earth Day River of Words & Art Contest honorable mention writing category.
Midnight
Blue velvet,
Spun across the open sky,
Reflected in the glassy pane.
Tears in a brilliant blue eye.
Caressing the shore.
Scintillation upon the surface.
A window locked to those who pass by,
Open to those who stop
And lay eyes on the hypnotizing beauty.
Spun gold entwined in icy ripples.
Seeping into broken dreams.
Healing.
Icy fingers finding the way,
Twisting through mountains.
Bridges pass over,
Another land under
Eyes seeing the way.
Day and night
A gateway to the unknown,
Adventure.
You'll find me there,
Forever in blue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| |
