Haywood Road Construction in West Asheville: What's Permanent?

If you drove down Haywood Road last Sunday night, you saw the cones and the mill machines chewing up asphalt under work lights. If you drove past the same stretch back in July, during the day, you might have seen something quieter and harder to watch: a woman named Veronica Carlson directing movers as they loaded the contents of her coffee shop onto a truck, three months after she'd opened it.

Both of those scenes are "construction" in the loose sense everyone in West Asheville has been using since spring. They are not the same thing, and treating them as one story is the mistake worth correcting before fall settles in. One of them ends by Thanksgiving. The other one is permanently changing who occupies which storefront on this street, and it started months before the paving crews showed up.

Two Projects, One Street

The confusion is understandable. NCDOT's resurfacing project and the I-26 Connector are both active on Haywood Road right now, both involve barricades and detours, and both get lumped together as "the road work" in casual conversation. The difference that actually matters to your week:

One is a repaving job. The other is reshaping which addresses on this block still have a business in them a year from now.

The Part That Ends in November

The resurfacing project is the one you'll notice more often and worry about less. NCDOT crews from Watson Contracting, based in Franklin, are working the corridor between Patton Avenue and Ridgelawn Road overnight, 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., Sunday through Thursday, with no work on Friday or Saturday nights. That schedule alone tells you something about who this project is built around: it's designed to stay out of the way of a weekend crowd on a street that depends on one.

The scope goes beyond fresh pavement. New bike lanes are coming in both directions from Patton Avenue to Sulphur Springs and again from Richmond Avenue to Ridgelawn Road, along with pedestrian refuge islands, flashing crossing signals, and ADA-compliant curb ramps at several points along the corridor. For a street that residents already use on foot and by bike more than most in Asheville, this is a genuine upgrade, not just cosmetic repaving.

Kathryn Adams, who owns Nice Time Glass about a half mile off Haywood Road and bikes to work most days, put her hope for the project simply: "people cycle on it because it's an improved quality of life." Not everyone experiences the corridor that way yet. Mackenzie Sains, who walks to work along the same street, has had closer calls than she'd like, saying cars won't stop for her "when I'm standing in the middle of the crosswalk."

The practical upshot for anyone living nearby: expect on-street parking to shift overnight in certain blocks as crews work, expect some noise between sundown and sunup on weeknights, and expect none of it to touch a single business's ability to stay open. This part of the disruption has an expiration date. Circle November.

The Part That Doesn't End

The I-26 Connector is different in kind, not just scale. It's been discussed since the late 1980s, and after decades of on-again, off-again planning, it broke ground this spring. The project's reach into West Asheville means the state has had to acquire property along the corridor, and not all of that property was empty.

The El Dorado building at 504 Haywood Road is the clearest example of what that means on the ground. Owned by Whiteley and her husband, Simon, the building has housed Haywood Famous, Desoto Lounge, Notch Collective, and the couple's own antiques business. All of those tenants received notices to vacate ahead of demolition. The Whiteleys had already relocated from their own nearby house after the state acquired it.

Haywood Famous, a Cuban-style coffee shop run by Eva Rodriguez-Cué, has until the end of September to leave. She'd known the possibility existed for years, telling a reporter that her landlords had warned her back when her daughter was still in a stroller, saying at the time it's probably not gonna happen, but we just have to tell you in case. She hopes to reopen somewhere else in West Asheville next year, though nothing is confirmed yet.

Desoto Lounge is in a harder spot. Co-owner Lisa Wagner rents rather than owns, which means the relocation compensation covers moving the business itself but nothing for lost sales or the specific combination that made 504 Haywood work in the first place: a walkable location, a bit of parking, and a patio out back. After months of searching, she's not confident a comparable spot exists. "It's not like any place will do," she said.

Asheville Kava X Coffee already went through this. Owner Veronica Carlson opened the shop in May 2025 hoping to build something lasting, and vacated the location on July 6 after getting the notice.

"I took the gamble. And the gamble ended up being shorter than I anticipated."

She's now merging her business with Earthling Coffee on Patton Avenue to form a new concept called Space Cowboy Coffee, combining a daytime drive-thru with kava and late-night gathering space in the evening. It's a real business, just not at the address anyone associates with it yet.

474 Gallery Studio already relocated, landing at 49 Haywood Road. Not every business on the acquisition list has been unlucky. Fleetwood's, the bar, music venue, and wedding chapel at 496 Haywood Road that the Whiteleys also co-own, was unexpectedly pulled from the state's acquisition plans back in March. The business was built in 2017 with the eminent domain risk already priced in, which is part of why the couple held off on major improvements for years. Now that the property's been spared, some of those investments may finally happen, though the delay already cost them.

None of this is reversible the way a repaving project is. When the mill-and-pave crews finish in November, Haywood Road will look like Haywood Road again, just smoother and safer to cross. When the I-26 Connector work finishes at a given block, some of what was there won't be back at that address, if it comes back at all.

What's Actually New Right Now

None of this means the street is shrinking. New businesses keep landing on Haywood Road even as others leave it, which says something about how much demand there still is for a storefront on this stretch.

Thunder Burgerz West aimed for an opening in the first half of August at 521 Haywood Road, the address that most recently held Taco Boy and, before that, Zia Taqueria. Owner Roy Trantham built the concept around Thunder Road, the 1957 film shot partly in Asheville, in which his father's 1936 Ford made a cameo. The new location has two dining rooms, a patio, two parking lots, and a stage behind the building for live music, karaoke, and outdoor movie nights. If you haven't been by yet, it's worth a look next time you're headed down that end of the road.

Finest, an Italian-American deli and bodega from Mike Bean and Gab Bonfiglio, opened on Haywood Road in late 2025, pulling from New York deli and bodega traditions with a walk-up window and a covered patio spilling onto the sidewalk. And MochaBox, at 1050 Haywood Road, has brought Yemeni and Middle Eastern coffee drinks to the corridor along with late-night hours.

What This Means for Your Fall

If you have a favorite spot in the stretch around Haywood Famous, Desoto Lounge, or the old Asheville Kava location, this is the season to go use it rather than assume it'll still be there next summer. The nightly lane closures and shifted parking through November are an inconvenience you can route around. The businesses being displaced by the interstate project are a different kind of change entirely, and some of them won't return to the block you know them from.

For a running list of who's currently open along the corridor, onHaywood.com has tracked West Asheville businesses for two decades and is putting out its 20th printed map this year, a good sign that whatever comes out of this stretch of construction, the street's own sense of itself isn't going anywhere.

If you're watching all of this and wondering what it might mean for property values, foot traffic patterns, or timing a move in or out of the neighborhood, that's a longer conversation, and one I'm always happy to have over coffee, ideally at whichever shop is still standing when we get to it. Nate Kelly has been in and around West Asheville long enough to help you sort the temporary disruption from the permanent kind, in real estate and otherwise. Let's Connect.