Beacon Bike Park brings major redevelopment to Swannanoa site

Beacon Bike Park is turning the former Beacon Blanket Mill site into one of the biggest redevelopment projects in Swannanoa, with a 4.7-acre parcel in downtown Beacon Village set to become a public green space built around the largest all-wheel bike facility of its kind in North and South America. Explore Asheville says the project includes bouldering walls, a one-mile paved walking loop, pavilions and a lawn that could host concerts and festivals for up to 4,000 people.

The scale is what separates this from a simple recreation project. Explore Asheville has put $4.5 million into the effort, the largest award in Buncombe County’s $12.4 million package of tourism-related capital investments. The Tourism Product Development Fund is paid for entirely by visitor lodging taxes, which gives the project a clear policy message: county tourism dollars are being steered toward a site officials see as both a visitor draw and a long-term economic asset. Explore Asheville says the park is expected to attract national and international attention through partnerships with Red Bull, UCI and USA BMX, and the design work is being handled by Velosolutions.

Beacon Foundation, the nonprofit driving the project, was formed in 2022 to revive the historic mill property. Its plan is to use revenue from special events and park operations to sustain the facility and support nonprofit partners across the Swannanoa Valley and Western North Carolina. That makes the park more than a public amenity. It is being built as an operating business, with event income and visitor traffic expected to help keep the site active after the opening rush fades.

The redevelopment also carries heavy symbolic weight in a community still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which battered Swannanoa with flooding and landslides in September 2024. The old Beacon Manufacturing plant opened in the 1920s, once employed as many as 2,300 people and became one of the largest blanket makers in the world before closing in 2002 and burning in 2003 in one of North Carolina’s largest structure fires. Rebuilding that property as a destination marks a sharp reversal for a site that sat as a reminder of the town’s industrial past.

The business ripple is already visible nearby. Short Sleeves Coffee opened in Swannanoa in November 2024 under post-storm conditions, Rite Buy Grocery is under construction at 106 Alexander Place with plans for fresh produce, meat, dairy and pantry staples, and Town Hardware & General Store has announced a second location in Beacon Village. For Swannanoa, the question is no longer whether the mill site changes, but whether Beacon Park becomes the anchor that keeps spending, jobs and foot traffic circulating east of Asheville instead of leaking elsewhere.