Late-night fire heavily damages future Salvage Station venue in Asheville

A late-night fire heavily damaged the building Salvage Station had planned to turn into its next Asheville home, dealing another blow to a venue already uprooted by flood destruction, eminent domain and years of redevelopment uncertainty in the River Arts District.

Fire crews were called to the Lyman Street building around 11:15 p.m. Thursday, April 23, after flames were reported at the former Asheville Waste Paper property at 304 Lyman St. When firefighters arrived, the structure was fully engulfed. The Asheville Fire Department said the fire was extinguished by 4:52 a.m. Friday, and officials said the building sustained significant fire damage. No injuries were reported. Investigators with both the Asheville Police Department and the Asheville Fire Department are still looking into what happened, and officials said a smaller fire had broken out at the same site one day earlier before major damage occurred.

The damage lands hard against a venue that has already been through a long stretch of disruption. Salvage Station opened its original Riverside Drive location in 2016 at 466 Riverside Drive. In May 2024, the venue said the N.C. Department of Transportation was acquiring that property by eminent domain for the I-26 Connector project and that it would have to vacate by the end of 2024. Hurricane Helene then destroyed the Riverside Drive site in late September 2024, wiping out the place many Asheville music fans knew along the French Broad River.

In November 2025, owners Danny McClinton and Katie Hild announced plans to rebuild in the River Arts District on the 13.5-acre former Asheville Waste Paper property. The site had been in the McMahan/Pace family since the 1940s and had operated as a recycling facility for decades. The building was also known locally for the large Homer Simpson and Bender mural by artist Jerkface. The first phase of the project was supposed to focus on cleanup and rehabilitation, and no opening date or construction timeline had been announced by late November 2025.

The new venue had been presented as a chance to bring back, in Hild’s words, “a magical place” to the River Arts District. WLOS reported the project was expected to create more jobs than the old location, and Salvage Station described the plan as a world-class, year-round indoor music venue. Now the question is whether the damaged Lyman Street building can still be salvaged enough for the project to move forward, and how much longer one of Asheville’s most closely watched cultural comebacks will be delayed.