Note from the President, UHNGCClub
Dear Neighbors,
What
a strange spring! Very dry, at first unseasonably cool, then hot. At
least rain is coming. But we still have our beautiful greenery and
flowers showing up.
We’ve had two gatherings at the site
this spring: a wonderful time for neighbors to catch up and have some
good food. At the May meeting, I announced that we had no program, we’d
just eat and visit. The group burst into applause! We’ve had some great
speakers in the past, but we’ll have some “let’s just visit” gatherings
again in the future.
At our April meeting, during the Q&A
after our update on the construction plans, a person asked about having a
building instead of a pavilion. The board has been working since the
Hurricane Helene aftermath. We've considered what seems like a hundred
possibilities. You’ve read the story in the Echo of the past few months
of the hard decision to remove the old building and the many steps
forward. Bottom line is, we can’t build a new building on our land,
a flood plain. A new building has to be on different land. We want to
keep—as surely you all do—our gathering place in its historical site.
That’s
not to say this is it. We still have the land that held the walking
trail. Some have asked for a playground, flower gardens and trees there.
And other ideas have been presented. Dream big! That’s what we say. But
first steps first: we need our pavilion/park. And I think we’ll be
seeing it being built soon.
We won’t have a community dinner in
June or July, as the reconstruction of the Kelly Hill Rd. bridge is
scheduled to start very soon and they will be working in that area. Our
construction starts right after. But next year, we’ll have our July
Fourth celebration in our new space! And, I hope, someday in the near
future, we have "fireworks." We can't legally have traditional
fireworks, but by then, maybe a fireworks-type drone show? Dream big!
Chuck Mallory
UHNGCC
Spring Begins with a Community Dinner Outside
New structure to replace Upper Hickory Nut Gorge Community Center
George Fabe Russell, Hendersonville Times-News
Wed, April 15, 2026 at 5:07 AM EDT - BlueRidgeNow
Plans are in motion to build a new gathering place on the site of the Upper Hickory Nut Gorge Community Center, “the cornerstone of Gerton” according to its president, Chuck Mallory, which was demolished in spring 2025 after it was damaged by flooding in Tropical Storm Helene.
The Upper Hickory Nut Gorge Community Club submitted preliminary plans for a pavilion to Henderson County April 7. Plans for the covered space, including a meeting area with tables and warming kitchen, Karen Owensby, chair of the committee tasked with rebuilding the center, told the Times-News on April 10. “Everybody’s really excited,” she said.
The old building couldn’t be rebuilt without raising the building several feet because it sits in the floodplain of the Hickory Creek, but an open pavilion is allowed, Mallory told the Times-News April 14. The Upper Hickory Nut Gorge Community Center in Gerton was seriously damaged in Tropical Storm Helene flooding. Around a year after its spring 2025 demolition, a new structure is planned to take its place.
The community center held monthly dinners and gatherings like book clubs and educational events on bear safety and rare salamanders, open to the public. “We haven’t had that for 18 months,” Owensby said. “Now, you just go over to your friend’s house, but when that building is built, we can gather with large groups.”
Around 50 or 60 people usually attended regular dinners and meetings before the storm, with around 100 coming to special events like the Fourth of July celebration, Mallory said. “We have no businesses (open to the public), we have no meeting spots, so that’s really the only place that the community can gather” in Gerton, he said.
Insurance money, private donations and grants, including from the Community Foundation of Henderson County are set to cover the cost of the project, estimated at around $300,000, Owensby said.
Joshua White, a custom homebuilder whose shop used to be just a few doors down from the community center, said he was upset to see it demolished. “It had a unique experience to it. But at the same time … the building was old and needed a lot more work than the community, at the time, could afford,” he said.
The building was at least 60 years old and some parts were around 100 years old, Mallory said.
One holdup in the construction timeline is a North Carolina Department of Transportation project to rebuild a small bridge adjacent to the community center, which is planned to spill over onto an easement on the lot, he said.
Once that’s done, construction on the pavilion can start, perhaps as soon as this summer, to be completed sometime between late fall 2026 and spring 2027, Mallory and Owensby said. Parking will be on a separate piece of land owned by the Community Club, but many people live walking distance, Mallory said.
“I just think maybe making an open building would limit the days they’d have possibilities for (using) that, so I don’t know if that’s the best idea. But, you know, any place that really would take the place of what we lost is not a loss,” John Kent, a general contractor in Gerton, told the Times-News April 14.
Owensby said that the pavilion plan has its own perks. “This will be an open building that people can access all the time … to just gather down there on a weekend night, down by the fire pit,” she said.
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