Kevan Frazier | Asheville City Council Candidate

Kevan Frazier can probably put his knowledge of Asheville history up against anyone’s. But the city native and tour guide, entrepreneur and educator hopes his encyclopedic recall of Asheville’s yesteryear can shape his approach to the city’s tomorrow. He’s one of six running for two seats on City Council.

Today, in our continuing series talking with every candidate for city council, Frazier tells us about his backstory and frames his approach to all the hot-button issues atop Asheville’s list of challenges—affordable housing and development, transit, public safety, and racial equity.

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: How did you come to be a walking encyclopedia of this city's history?

Kevan Frazier: I grew up at the foot of a grandfather who was an Asheville police officer and detective. He worked for the APD for over 30 years and was a good storyteller. And so you can imagine if you were a cop for over 30 years, you've probably got some interesting stories to tell. I was the first person in my family to go to college and I went to [00:01:00] UNC Asheville and it was there that I discovered this love of history.

Part of what took me to UNC Asheville, I had no idea what I wanted to major in, trying to figure out life and fell in love with history and the idea of also working in higher education. And so I went off and did studies in history and there was a trip that I was taking with Our cohort, and we went to the Library of Congress, and they had set all this up for us to meet the bibliographer of the Library and the Congress.

And I'll be honest, as a history nerd, that gets pretty exciting. A fella who's been there for 30 some years himself. And While we were there, we had time to get to work at the Library of Congress, and I went and was doing a little bit of, a little bit of search for a project I had done on this fellow called John Nolan.

And John was the first professional city planner in the United States. Graduated from Harvard in 1903, and he did a city plan for Asheville. And I didn't know that until I was [00:02:00] there at the LOC. And that got me digging in that and ended up doing my graduate work on Asheville. And the more I did, the more I dug into and got to read all these great stories and was really excited to, to learn the history of my hometown. 

Cause when I grew up in Asheville in the 1970s, it was a downtown almost completely collapsed. And I've seen in my lifetime, this whole re emergence of Asheville. And so that got me interested in history and I got very interested in urban history and the history of cities. And I kept going back to studying my own hometown and then got my first professional teaching gig at UNC Asheville. Got to come home to my alma mater after graduate school and started taking students out on tours.

And I had some friends who worked at front desk at some of the hotels, and I said, there are a lot of folks that come to Asheville that want to know more about Asheville. And that led me [00:03:00] in 2014 to create Asheville by Foot Walking Tours. And we still do tours. I've got a great group of guides that do them every day at 10 o'clock. And that just kept growing my interest in Asheville history. And so I'm really fortunate while I don't teach in the classroom anymore, I get to do anywhere from about three to four dozen talks on Asheville on various topics every year and get to take folks on tours.

We just did that. Not too long ago with the new boom town festival and got to do some fun architecture tours to that were mostly locals, just folks wanting to learn more about their downtown. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. You've been the teacher, you lead tours, you own a business, Well-Played Board Games, and I imagine all those backgrounds come to you wanting to run for city council or at least having a viewpoint from those vantages, contributing to your saying, Hey, I want to see it on the city council. Why after all these years, are you now seeking a seat on city council? 

Kevan Frazier: Sure. So this fall I found myself frustrated [00:04:00] with some things that I really wished we were moving forward as a city. And then I did a little bit of soul searching. I said you can be frustrated or you can actually do something.

And I realized that I'd spent all these years talking about folks who kept stepping up for Asheville, just regular folks that then offered their leadership to the city and that's what led this transformation over the past Half century. And so I finally reached the point in the fall that I said, okay If there are things I want to see different in my city, then I need to step up.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, what was frustrating you specifically that you thought hey, I need to step up to this? 

Kevan Frazier: It wasn't this project in particular, but It's projects like the so called pit of despair Or well of hope, however you want to, that's across from the library. Exactly. That we've been setting on for years. I was frustrated how long it was taking to conclude what was in community decision about Pack [00:05:00] square.

And then also just how much we're talking about affordable housing. And I felt like we weren't making the actions as a city to actually support growing affordable housing and that the affordable housing is really what pushed me over that I said, okay, because I had some friends That they make good wages in Asheville at that point in their lives to buy a house and can't even come close to it. 

Matt Peiken: You mentioned a few things that have a common thread. You mentioned the so called pit of despair. You mentioned Pack Square. You mentioned affordable housing, all of which weren't happening at a pace that you felt should be happening at. What do you think you can do or what do you want to bring to City Council that would expedite and quicken the processes to make things happen and not keep things languishing as you've painted them?

Kevan Frazier: I think it's about keeping focus and working with colleagues to keep focus. There's a ton of stuff city council can always be focused on all the [00:06:00] time. But if council's focused on everything all the time, we won't ever see anything advance. And so I think part of that's working together as a council and saying, okay, we're going to continue to put our efforts in on affordable housing.

Our best way is the Unified Development Ordinance, the UDO. And so how do we do that? And what's the plan? Is this a six month, a 12 month, an 18 month, a two year? I'm a guy that likes to get stuff done. Partly the roles I have from being a business owner and working for Western Carolina and other roles I have in the community, I'm just a believer we can work together to make stuff happen. 

Matt Peiken: You said though that instead of putting our focus on all these things, to take a another view of this the City Council has to pay attention to all these things. There are so many things that come up for City Council. You name your issue and City Council has to address it in one way shape or form.

How can you train a [00:07:00] focus on let's say affordable housing when our addiction issues and mental health and public education, better pay for workers, there's so many things that come up, public health, where would your priorities sit when all those things are supposedly high priority? 

Kevan Frazier: Your point's well taken. There are a lot of things the city's focused on. I think part of the way to do that, cause you're right, we can't say this will be the year of affordable housing and that's all we're going to do. That's not realistic, but there are ways that we can approach in using both that relationship between city council and city staff and how those priorities are set, but also the other leaders in the community.

I'll give an example that I think the right path that both the county and city have been heading down is this continuum of care model for folks who are unhoused, because there are so many great nonprofits doing great [00:08:00] work, but they weren't in coordination. And Frankly, the city is not an expert in homelessness, but there are lots of great groups who are experts in homelessness.

And the work then gets to be from the city to support those groups in doing their work and not trying to supplant it by adding yet another layer and another layer. So I think part of that is how's that work with city staff? And then how does the council work with other community organizations?

City Council's there to govern and not manage. And that to me is about supporting other folks and other institutions to do their best work. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, but doesn't the city employ on city staff, people who are, if they are supposedly experts in certain areas or they have backgrounds in affordable housing, for instance, we have an affordable housing team within the city of Asheville, and there are other people who are experts on staff who are about urban planning and zoning. And do you feel that the city doesn't have the [00:09:00] expertise unto itself and that we need to rely more on nonprofit leaders, people in academia? What do you want to see happening in terms of an expertise or resources that we're not doing right now?

Kevan Frazier: Sure. So I'll stick with the example You started off with affordable housing. So we've definitely got folks on city staff who are experts in affordable housing and we need to have experts in affordable housing That then can help direct both staff and council In doing the work that we have the ability to do.

For example, so many folks talk about they know that cities are weak in North Carolina, the General Assembly has much greater authority than cities. We're not a home rule state, but one of the things cities can do are its development ordinances. It has almost complete control over that, and keeping a focus on that, having the experts to help you Do that good work. In the end. Is the city going to build affordable housing? No, We're not set up to do that. That's builders and developers and [00:10:00] individuals who are going to do that, And so our work as a city is to help support them to do good work for the folks. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, and one of the things you're mentioning about the unified development ordinance, and I know The city owns land. There's properties that they talk about developing partnerships with developers to build affordable housing.

From my distant vantage, it doesn't seem to be happening enough, and maybe we don't have the power as a city to incentivize that deeply developers to develop properties that are truly affordable to people at the bottom of the economic spectrum. Are there things within the UDO that you'd like to see happen or more emphasis on than is currently happening?

Kevan Frazier: Yeah, for me and the UDO, it's first and foremost about doing the change work to create the so called missing middle. I'll be honest, we've used that term so much, I worry that it doesn't have, it's not impactful anymore. Yeah. It's about this collection of housing that's weirdly not available in Asheville.[00:11:00] 

It's townhouses, it's duplexes and triplexes and semi detached. You go to any other city and you look at our city prior to the 1990s and you see that. Because the idea was that folks would progress in housing. You'd have an entry level house Then maybe you had kids and you get a bigger house and you do that You can't do that in asheville buncombe.

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Yeah. Why is that? I know there's the old classic NIMBYism And people Supposedly don't want that kind of development in their neighborhood, and there is the response that has come from that the YIMBYism. There's the yes in my backyard contingency. Why do you think Asheville in particular is riddled, or at least hindered by this NIMBYism, if that's what you would term it?

Kevan Frazier: So you see this change that happened in 97 when the current Unified Development Ordinance, UDO, was set. And it just had this proclivity to support single family houses. There's nothing wrong with single family houses, But you need to have it in a mix.

And in fact, it changed properties [00:12:00] in the city, which before 97, multifamily housing would have been allowed. And I'm not talking big apartment complexes, like four plexes, courtyard collections of four or five units. They just stopped those. It was to the tune of almost 7, 000 properties that was no longer available.

And the unfortunate thing is that just locked in. We're in the mountains. While Buncombe's a big county, City of Asheville's a fairly good sized city land wise, we don't have a ton of land because we've got mountains all around us and so we don't have that amount of flat land To go on. But if we make those changes and there's some under consideration right now, but there's more deeper work that has to be done, then that will open up some property to be able to do this.

Matt Peiken: Was I mischaracterizing it as you were speaking? I was thinking maybe it's not just a NIMBYism. Maybe also you mentioned the UDO. Was the city [00:13:00] itself not allowing that kind of multifamily housing for a long time? 

Kevan Frazier: Yes and still doesn't. Until we changed the UDO, there's a lot of that kind of housing that I just shared you can't build in on a lot of lots that in any other city you'd go, oh, yeah This is exactly where you'd build duplex a fourplex for townhomes or whatnot. 

Matt Peiken: So how do you as one new member of a city council try to enact change? Is that something you do from the council dais? Or is that something you do out, you know talking with Stephanie Monson Dahl at the planning department and others. Stephanie, I think she'd agree with you. She completely agree with you there and she runs our planning department. So if she's on board with that, why is it not happening? 

Kevan Frazier: It's frankly, it's a big lift and our planning department is already Stacked up with work. And I think the work council needs to do is help provide them the support [00:14:00] to be able to do that. 

There's a bit of a running joke in Asheville, right? That, that we love a consultant and we'll have a, we'll do a report and a study on anything. And in this case, I'm not talking about a report or a study, but actually bring someone in a company, a fireman who can help work with Stephanie's team to rewrite the code so that they're going to provide the leadership so that it's an Asheville framework. We don't want to take somebody else's UDO and make it ours. 

Durham just did this. They pulled in a consultancy firm to help them and actually Do the work in the ordinances that then they could pass as a city council. Otherwise the UDO is big, I mean, it's a significant document and at times very complicated.

And if we do this piecemeal, it'll take us years and frankly we don't have years. 

Matt Peiken: So piecemeal, if we do what piecemeal? 

Kevan Frazier: So two changes that came up this week. One is about flag lots and the other is [00:15:00] about cottage developments. Flag lots are about being able to parcel off part of your existing property to build a small home, right?

Tiny home size or something like could be a little bigger than that. And then the cottage development has to do with what we were talking about being able to build multiple smaller homes in one lot. These are typically single family homes. But as they were going through that, there's some ripple effects in the UDO that if they don't address could actually make this even harder to do, even though there was a goal to make it easier, and frankly could do it in such a way that really focuses on Gentrification and make sure everybody's covered in that. 

Matt Peiken: Are these pieces of the UDO that are just Antiquated and old but are still existing on the books that just need to be almost like bad code need to be written out Or what is it?

Kevan Frazier: What Asheville did in the 90s wasn't some outlier that it was alone in this. There was a lot of this. There's a movement nationally. There's [00:16:00] an entity particularly called the Strong Towns Movement, and they were formed in the late 2000s, like 2008 or 9, who really are proponents of thinking through things like this.

Another example is parking minimums. We are not as fraught with parking minimums as some other cities, but it can create this framework that you can't actually build anything because you have to do so much parking And there's not enough land on the property you're developing and so you just get stuck.

Matt Peiken: I want to talk about public safety. That's another big issue in this city And I was curious first of all, what was your thought about the Business Improvement District and when that came up to A vote. What was your thinking on this? 

Kevan Frazier: Yeah, so I Was supportive of the Business Improvement District as it was coming through, and I'm supportive of it now. It's not a unique piece of ordinance. Cities have been doing this since the seventies. And the vast majority of cities, this [00:17:00] works really well.

There were some folks in town deeply concerned. Cause they had some examples where it didn't go well in a city. And that was well worth listening to and making sure we don't want to do that.

I got concerned in the conversations that the part of what today the city is calling in the RFP for the services, community connectors, and to be called ambassadors and whatnot, folks began to frame that these were some kind of like private police force or security force, none of that, Was ever framed for that to be the case.

Matt Peiken: Right, but the language, I will say there's some vagary in the language that gives a subjectivity and it gives some interpretation on the hands of these ambassadors to determine whether somebody poses a problem or not. If somebody's let's say in the, you could see this conceivably happening, somebody homeless or somebody going through an episode and that they're on a corner and in a park or something [00:18:00] place and an ambassador could determine that's not the kind of person, that kind of behavior is not who we want to see downtown. There is room in that code for that.

Kevan Frazier: You absolutely could go that path. And that's not the path I want to see us to go down. And I don't think any folks in city leadership want us to see us go down. Everything right now sets within the city and the RFP process to what they want that to be. And they're calling upon entities to apply to manage the BID. And then they'll manage the hiring of folks, but the city's setting a very clear framework for what the expectations are. And that's exactly what the city needs to do for me. 

And like the example you gave, success would be if you've got somebody who's in crisis, having a problem on the corner of the street, the goal is for the ambassador, or whatever, community connector, to be like, this person needs help, let me get the right help for them. It's not about getting them off the street, [00:19:00] making them not exist, that That's not the right path. 

Matt Peiken: You know was something that I saw just come across recently that the city fire department is going to be like I guess first on the scene for certain public facing street problems, not necessarily calling in police But first responders to things that might be a public health issue. What's your thought on that?

Kevan Frazier: I think that's great. The county's been thinking similar thoughts. I think the city is thinking about how do we get the right people to the right situation. In the past, it was always about you put in, send an armed police officer to handle any situation. At a certain point, not that long ago in Asheville, that even included animal control and sound issues.

There ain't any reason an armed police officer needs to go for sound issues. And in some cases, these are folks that need a medical care, they might need mental health care that other responders, community responders, co responders can actually help and get the right help to the person so that they're taken care of.

In the end, this is [00:20:00] about our people. This is about taking care of our neighbors, whether our neighbors have a house or whether our neighbors live on the street or in a shelter, we're all neighbors and we got to keep an eye out and take care of each other. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. The top line issues, public safety and affordable housing, what are some things that people you don't think are paying enough attention to that fall within the purview of city leadership to oversee or take a leadership role on? 

Kevan Frazier: Sure. There's a couple of things that come to my mind. One is, if we're talking about affordable housing, we have to be talking about transportation. And that's both transit and multimodal transportation. I want every neighborhood to be able to safely use cars, bikes, walk, public transit, so that everybody has access. So wherever they need to go, they can make the best choice for them. 

For me, in terms of the transit system, our work is to work with the county, we've got to make this a metropolitan transit system. It's contained within the city right now, and it doesn't serve our folks [00:21:00] well. It's based on this hub and spoke model that makes an assumption that everybody needs to come downtown, and they don't. And in my work for Western Carolina University, where part of what I do is economic community development, I'm meeting with manufacturers and South Buncombe County who are desperate for good employees.

And then I'm around town and in neighborhoods that have folks looking for work, but there's not a cost effective means for them to get down. People say, Oh, they should take an Uber folks and that's not cost effective at all. I mean, they can't take one to two hours of their pay to pay for one direction of transportation. That's not sensible.

And so I think as we are maturing as a city, as we're maturing as county, we're at a moment we need to be looking at metropolitan transit. 

Matt Peiken: When you talk about that, though, you're saying not everybody needs to go downtown. That's true. But we are a far flung county in some ways.

How would you redesign or sharpen [00:22:00] the routing and the availability of buses or expand beyond buses. What would you want to see happening that's not happening? 

Kevan Frazier: Right now, we're very reliant on the big bus. And our whole transit system's around big buses. But there are communities that will have main arteries with big buses and then smaller arteries with smaller vehicles.

I'm talking a little bit out of school, but I'll be up driving on River Road, and I see all of Buncombe County's mountain mobility vans, and I'm thinking, there's got to be a way to let that serve their principal purpose, but also work together to serve, and in fact, it's actually the same contractor that the city uses And the county uses that does both of those. And I'm like maybe that's a good opportunity to get folks in conversation about how could that be?

We're in this hub and spoke model. Other cities with buses may use what looks a bit more like a subway system, that there are key arteries. [00:23:00] There typically might be More transfer that you might have to transfer twice, but your time in transit is actually shorter because you didn't have to go, in our case Coxe Avenue, and then get to the next one and then get to the next one.

Matt Peiken: One of the things I wanted to see, it's funny you bring that up and I hadn't thought about this in a while, but with the widening of I 26, why a center lane on rush hour isn't used for just transit to go from Hendersonville up into Asheville and, I don't know where how north to south, like maybe even, it's from Johnson City into Asheville or Mars Hill.

To have that kind of one direction and then the east west going from black mountain a transit center lane from black mountain going to maybe Sylva and coming into Asheville and then having things other smaller transit operate off of that but having a transit that would be Uninterrupted by other traffic and just come in [00:24:00] that way.

Is that completely unrealistic? 

Kevan Frazier: I think there are opportunities there to do it because as you're saying that, I'm thinking about adjacent counties that do run some kind of transit system and a lot of their transit system is particularly focused on older folks that may not have, may not be able to drive anymore, but that doesn't mean those can't come together.

We're a regional community. You feel it every day. When I have to go to an early morning meeting out in Jackson County at WCU's main campus, and I see the bumper to bumper cars coming into Buncombe County, you get it. You understand very quickly how much we're a regional hub for all of Western North Carolina.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, but it seems like getting people to use public transportation, the incentive is can it get me there faster.

Kevan Frazier: Right? So my example from a few weeks ago, I was up visiting a friend and flew back into Asheville and I took an Uber from home to the airport when I left because frankly, I was concerned I [00:25:00] wouldn't go find parking and I'm not bad mouth airport.

I think they're doing really good work to get us bigger and we can get, I can get more places I could ever get before. So I get there and I'm worried a little bit about getting an Uber coming back. And in fact, we were a little bit off in timing and three planes were deplaning. So I opened my Uber app and to get from the Asheville airport to downtown Asheville was $148.

What? Because we were in surge pricing. And so I was like, okay, that's not happening. So I figured I was just going to wait it out. But then I thought okay, Maybe I take the bus and frankly, I just never thought about it before and should have and I'm pulling up and the bus had just left and it wasn't gonna be back around for three hours.

And I'm like, in the city I just come from, I took a bus. In fact, they call it the 7 47, all puns intended, from downtown to the airport. And it was great. And that's all it did. [00:26:00] It cost me 10 bucks. And I thought, wow, that to me is a great opportunity that serves locals and it serves visitors, but it's tough. That would be one of the ways that you build some interest in public transit, because there are people who may have that one use, but that one use is important to them. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Is there any other elements, any issues that we haven't talked about that you want to address? 

Kevan Frazier: Yeah, I think one of the ones that I get concerned that we keep moving down the line is environmentalism and the city's commitment to that. And in fact, I would pull both environmentalism and a commitment to equity together. 

There are some interrelations and there are also things that are very different, but to me, those are issues different than public safety or affordability in housing. Everything else we're going to talk about needs to also be seen within an equity lens and within an environmental lens and in the topic of environmentalism, [00:27:00] I think the city set some really good goals. I don't think we're tracking those well and making adjustments as we need to. And a lot of that's what the city itself does as well as encouraging community members. And I think an equity, the big test is going to be, and I think the next council will be the one who will bear most of it is what happens with the recommendations from the reparations commission. 

Matt Peiken: Talk about that a little bit. I know the city finally said, okay, we'll extend the life of this. I don't even know the. Why that's an issue extending life. Why can't the reparations commission take as long as it feels it needs to? 

Kevan Frazier: Matt, I couldn't agree more. I'm of a mindset that it literally took hundreds of years for us to get to this place. Let's take the time we need to do really good work. It is complicated work. That we live in a city that's even willing to step up and face this is really powerful. And that we then have community leaders who've been sitting on this commission for the past couple of years who are putting themselves out there doing tough work that they get questioned a lot [00:28:00] about from all sides and within our community, and we want to give folks time. Actually this week, I was looking through the draft recommendations and I'm interested to see what becomes the final recommendation. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Even getting to draft recommendations, this is a 25 person body. To get 25 people to even have a unanimity around certain important issues like that I think is. I was skeptical having that large of a commission and at the same time I understand why they had to or felt they had to because they're just to have that many stakeholders and represented.

So what is the role of city council? Let's say the reparations commission comes forward with this is our platform. This is what we want to see happen. As you know a white male City council member, do you see your role in that? As anything other than saying you want this, okay. What is the role for a white city council person when it comes to the reparations commission's [00:29:00] work?

Kevan Frazier: I think for City Council on the whole, it's going to be about going through the recommendations and figuring out what the priority is.

It's a very significant collection of recommendations, and I don't think anybody on the committee believes all that can happen in a year and in one cycle, however you want to frame it. And that's also going to be back to our earlier conversation.

For example, I was reading a lot of the recommendations about small business and supporting small business. If the city does that and is not working hand in hand with Black Wall Street, with Mountain Biz Works, with Venture Asheville, then we'd be heading down the wrong path. Because those are existing entities that Then could provide the support.

But then it's about maybe there's financial support that the city says, here, we can support this through a grant process. We want you all to administer this. So I think it's going to be about going through that really carefully and figuring out what the community is saying, this is our priority, and And then make [00:30:00] a decision from there.

It's about listening to our community and folks who have lived experience. You pointed out a second ago, I'm a white guy from Appalachia, and mine is not to come in with the solutions and answers for everybody else. Mine's to listen to my neighbors and folks who have lived experiences and have got smart ideas and back them up and support them and making that happen.

Matt Peiken: Anything else you want people to know voters to know before they head to the polls around your candidacy and just looking at city council, in general?

Kevan Frazier: Sure. My role that I have for Western Carolina University, I head up our satellite campus that we've got down in South Asheville. Part of my role with all that is to be WCU's lead community and economic development person in Asheville.

So I've spent as much time away from our campus there in Biltmore Park as I do there. And I'm at meetings and gatherings all over town to be able to see how the university can support what we're doing. I'm one of the folks [00:31:00] sitting at the table when we're recruiting companies to come and bring great jobs to Asheville. I've worked for nearly 25 years in public higher education, and sometimes the Republicans are in charge and sometimes the Democrats are in charge.

And frankly, I don't care who's in charge. And I have had great mentors over the years who've taught me how to be a guy to walk down the middle of the aisle, shake hands on both sides. And in that case, make sure we're taking care of our students and finding that common ground. And that's the very same thing I'll do for the city of Asheville is find that common ground that we're supporting our community so that we are not just battling it out .

This week I've been thinking a lot about fixing stuff. I'm not into fixing stuff right now. I'm into moving forward. You'll hear me say, when you turn your water on, you need to get water right. When you back out of your driveway, you need to not hit potholes.

Those are key city services. But it's also about how do we move Asheville forward. [00:32:00] It's a great city. It's done great work over the past 50 years. How do we then step up ourselves and make it great in its next chapter in a way that more people are part of the prosperity of Asheville?