Biltmore Village Storefronts Remain Vacant 17 Months After Helene

Sherrye Coggiola ran the Cantina at Historic Biltmore Village for 15 years alongside her husband Anthony and daughter Sydney. When Hurricane Helene hit, the financial math simply stopped working. "The decision was agonizing, but the financial realities were too overwhelming," she said. The Cantina will not reopen, and neither will Well-Bred Bakery & Cafe — two of the more recognizable names among the businesses that have quietly confirmed they are gone for good.

Seventeen months after Helene, blocks of Biltmore Village still show the visible scars reporters found this week: boarded windows, empty storefronts, and historic homes that once held retail shops now requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs. Tourists were still moving through the village on Thursday, pausing to look at shuttered buildings alongside the few shops that have managed to return.

The physical damage tells its own story. A multi-tenant building that once housed Williams Sonoma, Talbot's, and Chico's, along with one locally owned store, took floodwater roughly six feet up the front windows — and more than 25 feet up the back. By late December, like most flooded buildings still standing in Biltmore Village, the shops inside had been gutted to the studs. Benjamin Mitchell, vice president of administration for Biltmore Property Group, pointed to water that had crept inside the double-pane glass of the building roughly 85 days after the storm. "And as you can see here, the water has managed to find its way into a double pane glass, and this is roughly 85 days later," Mitchell said. The entrance to the Grand Bohemian Hotel remained boarded up as well, with renovations ongoing.

On the leasing side, commercial broker Jessica Auge with Likewise Commercial Realty showed a 2,500-square-foot retail space at 14 Lodge Street listed for $10,000 a month and described it as "turnkey retail." Interest has been coming in from both ends of the market. "We've been getting interest from some local businesses, but also a fair amount of national retailers," Auge said. A separate realtor told News 13 that a number of buildings listed for sale are sitting without offers.

Some merchants and builders familiar with the village said they believe it will be fully leased within two years, returning to pre-Helene retail levels. The reopening of the Biltmore Village McDonald's, 15 months after Helene, offered one concrete data point. Along Hendersonville Road, crews were working toward a soft opening in April for Gemelli, a new restaurant whose upgraded space is expected to seat more than 100 diners.

Whether more businesses follow remains genuinely uncertain. Kara Irani, director of public relations for the village association, said the number of businesses committed to reopening is "a moving target right now." The swings in sentiment can happen week to week. "Some weeks I talk to folks, and they just think it's not even going to be possible," Irani said. "And then some weeks, I look at their social media feed and they say, 'We're going to come back.