Asheville Crews Begin Clearing Debris at Long-Vacant Mountaineer Inn

Contracted crews arrived at the defunct Mountaineer Inn on Tunnel Road Monday, working to clean up the distressed property after it sat vacant for years. A yellow City of Asheville truck was parked outside around 10:45 a.m., with workers observed inspecting the in-ground pool, which city inspection photos showed filled with dirty water and garbage. Other photos from the city's report showed motel rooms filled with garbage, including syringes, and evidence of people living on the property despite its closure.

City of Asheville spokesperson Kim Miller said WNC Landscaper was contracted for the cleanup. Miller said crews would drain the pool Monday and clear garbage across the property, with plans to mow overgrown grass Tuesday.

The activity comes weeks after a Buncombe County judge approved the cleanup work, issuing a court injunction requiring the motel's owners to clean up the site or allowing the city to do so and attempt to recoup costs. The judge's injunction gave the owners 30 days to clean up the site, which the owners did not do.

The property's tangled ownership history reaches back to 2023. LOGE Camps bought the Mountaineer Inn for more than $6 million, with plans to renovate it, though an Asheville developer told News 13 at the time the sale price seemed inflated. Over the years, little to no work was done on the property, and multiple reports of unpaid property taxes totaling tens of thousands of dollars appeared in news headlines. Radify Asheville, a limited liability company created as the ownership instrument for the Mountaineer Inn, has nearly $30,000 in unpaid property taxes in Buncombe County. Buncombe County has hired outside counsel to try to get the ownership group to pay the outstanding taxes; if the group does not pay, the next steps would be court filings to move toward a tax lien foreclosure, a process a county spokesperson said can typically take more than a year.

The condition of the property alarmed those who had worked there. Judd Hollifield, owner of security company Dominion XP, filed a mechanic's lien against the owners for more than $28,000 after providing security services at the site last fall. He described broken windows, knocked-out walls, and needles everywhere, with evidence of drug use and what he believed were meth cookers on the property. He said his staff had to remove members of the transient community daily, as people had broken in and were living inside a property littered with drug paraphernalia. Hollifield said his broader concern is that the abandoned property could be a fire hazard to the community.

City Attorney Brad Branham confirmed the scope of what code enforcement found. "The clear indication is that people have been habituating there for some time," Branham said, acknowledging Tunnel Road has become a corridor where the city's homeless population has congregated around the vacant motel. "There's obviously been certain drug usage on the property as well. We're finding things like needles, and human excrement. People have been in those rooms starting fires for cooking purposes or otherwise."

The motel is listed for sale at an undisclosed price by Marcus & Millichap Davis DeWese Messinger DDM Hotels, a South Carolina-based hotel brokerage firm. On Monday, a man seen walking the grounds and taking photos told News 13 he represented prospective buyers, but said it would be "a stretch" to buy the property.

The cleanup drew sharp public reaction. Jenica Schroeder Grooms, commenting on the city's social media announcement, wrote: "So Asheville City you spend money to clean this up, but what about the rest of the homeless encampments that are around? Is your agenda to only clean up what the tourist can see? What about the rest of us who are working citizens, who contribute to paying taxes and everything else?"

Buncombe County Superior Court Judge Alan Thornburg ordered Radify Asheville LLC, a now-defunct business entity, to clean up the Mountaineer Inn or face a potential lien to cover the bill for city staff to do it. Whether the city will successfully recoup cleanup costs from an ownership group whose North Carolina business license has been revoked, and whose tax bill continues to accrue interest, remains an open question.