Downtown Asheville outage leaves hundreds without power during workday

Downtown Asheville’s business district went dark Thursday afternoon, cutting electricity to nearly 1,000 Duke Energy customers and disrupting one of the city’s busiest blocks during the workday. The outage started around 4:08 p.m. on June 25 and spread across a wide stretch of the city center, including Coxe Avenue, Patton Avenue, Hilliard Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Church Street, Asheland Avenue and South French Broad Avenue.

Asheville Police Department Public Information Officer Rick Rice said the outage was tied to a power box on Rankin Avenue, and officers were directing traffic in the area as the blackout unfolded. The loss of power hit restaurants, shops and offices in the downtown core at a time when foot traffic is usually heavy and even a short outage can shut down cash registers, kitchen equipment and street-level operations.

Duke Energy crews said they were repairing damage to underground equipment, but the utility had not identified the cause of the outage while the work was underway. That uncertainty matters in downtown Asheville, where a failure in one buried component can affect a large swath of the commercial district quickly and leave businesses exposed to a second blow after months of recovery from earlier disruptions.

Duke Energy’s outage map is updated about every 15 minutes, and customers can sign up for alerts by text, email or voice mail. Those updates were the main public window into how far the outage had spread and how many customers were affected as crews worked to restore service.

Thursday’s blackout also fit a pattern that downtown merchants know too well. In 2024, another downtown outage left about 3,500 people without power after an equipment failure at the Biltmore substation. A separate downtown incident cut power to more than 1,000 people after transmission lines were damaged. Together, those outages have put a sharper focus on the reliability of Asheville’s central utility network and the vulnerability of underground infrastructure in the city’s busiest commercial zone.

The stakes are especially high for downtown businesses still operating after Helene-related disruptions, including a June 2025 period when more than three dozen downtown businesses closed amid a lack of potable water and lower foot traffic. For Asheville’s city center, Thursday’s outage was another reminder that one damaged box or line can ripple across the core in minutes.