Downtown Brevard Celebrates Start of Christmas Shopping Season and an Investment Boom

Record amounts of money have poured into buildings and shops in the Heart of Brevard district. Foot traffic is up, business owners say, but struggles with inventory and staffing remain.

Owner Martha Carlton in her Theophilus store’s new East Main Street location

BREVARD — There was a time when the selection at Martha Carlton’s downtown Theophilus store was mostly limited to gifts and women’s clothing.

But as its floor space expanded in two moves over 12 years, so did its range of merchandise. And since the October opening of a new, 4,200-square foot location on East Main Street, Carlton has been able to more than double her inventory of children’s and babies’ clothes, “which is one of our fastest growing sectors,” she said.

There is more room for “comfy . . . work-from-home clothes,” sales of which have boomed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Carlton said. She has even been able to display chairs, tables, rugs, lamps and chandeliers.

“We are trying to offer affordable home decor for young families,” she said. “Before, we just didn’t have the room.”

What’s true for Theophilus is true for all of downtown Brevard, where a boom in investment is as obvious as the Christmas lights adorning its trees and storefronts.

More than $8.5 million in public and private funds were poured into the central shopping district in fiscal year 2021, or about seven times as much as during the previous year, according to a soon-to-be released report compiled by Heart of Brevard, a nonprofit that promotes downtown preservation and enterprise.

That figure includes some small grants, said the group’s executive director, Nicole Bentley, but “for the most part that number is reflective of properties sold, buildings sold and improvements from private investors.”

Though visitors kicking off the start of the holiday shopping season will notice lingering impacts of the pandemic — including reduced hours due to staffing shortage and inventory limited by supply-chain disruptions — what they will mostly see are the results of this investment: 14 new downtown businesses identified by Heart of Brevard in its report, as well as 17 existing enterprises that have been expanded or refurbished.

These include the relocation of Theophilus, an addition to the Cup & Saucer coffee shop, the move of the Blind Mule Restaurant from Lake Toxaway to South Gaston Street, and new businesses such as Stella’s Sweet Boutique and the Earth Mountain Bicycle shop.

“Downtown is really thriving,” Bentley said. “We have a robust assortment of local and independent businesses that add to Brevard’s character, and I think we will only see this continue.”

It will continue, for example, in another highly anticipated opening not included in the report — a third location of Sycamore Cycles planned for the former Transylvania Times building; the $825,000 sale of the property closed in October, after the end of the fiscal year.

Then there’s the most ambitious plan of all — a boutique hotel on a North Broad Street parcel that was purchased from the city for $2.45 million earlier this year but that will not be incorporated into the Heart of Brevard district until 2022.

The surging interest in downtown Brevard reflects national and statewide trends, Bentley said. Brevard and the other small and mid-sized downtowns tracked by the North Carolina Main Street and Rural Planning Center received a total of $63 million more investment in fiscal 2021 than in 2020, which had set the previous record.

And Brevard in particular, Bentley said, has “been blessed” with an unusually high degree of loyalty from longtime residents, including Wes Dickson, owner of Sycamore Cycles.

“Brevard is my home and I want to be in the fabric of it however I can fit in,” said Dickson, who, before opening current locations in Pisgah Forest and Hendersonville, established his business on West Main Street.

“The way I phrase it is, I’m returning to downtown,” he said. “This commitment is going to be something I can feel great about.”

Staffing and Supply

When Transylvania Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Clark Lovelace was asked about the surge in downtown investment, he added an important caveat.

Foot traffic has fully rebounded from the early days of the pandemic, he said, but some businesses are struggling to acquire inventory due to clogged supply chains. Also, he said, eating and drinking establishments, especially, have been plagued by the persistent shortage of workers, and at least two such enterprises — KTCHN restaurant (previously at the new site of Theophilus) and Kiwi Gelato — were forced to close this year.

“There is still a pandemic impact,” Lovelace said, “but it’s 180 degrees different from what it was 18 months ago.”

The Covid-driven surge in outdoor recreation that helped bring record numbers of tourists to Transylvania County, has also strained the capacity of recreational equipment manufacturers, Bentley said.

That squeeze has definitely filtered down to retailers, said Dee Dee Perkins, owner of D.D. Bullwinkel's Outdoors and Moose Tracks Footwear.

Customers who have their eye on a particular hiking book for example, might have to be flexible to find the right fit.

“If you wear size nine, we’ll come back with what we have available in size nine,” she said. “It can’t be driven by the style or brand. It will have to be driven by what we have in stock.”

And though Bullwinkel’s is holding a Black Friday event offering free coffee, mimosas, and baked goodies, it can’t offer the usual discounts because of the difficulty in restocking before Christmas, said Perkins, who also owns Rocky's Grill and Soda Shop on South Broad Street.

Like many other restaurants, Rocky’s has adjusted by cutting days and hours of operation. And this summer, Perkins said, it hired more teenage workers than usual.

They turned out to be good workers, she said, but because of their shorter hours of availability and inexperience, this strategy required “extensive added training and management expenses.”

And trouble for restaurants will, long term, mean trouble for the district as a whole, she warned.

“Restaurants are the driver of foot traffic,” she said, “and we really need to make sure we don’t lose restaurants downtown.”

That is a concern that Bentley shares, she said, and Heart of Brevard has started to explore the idea of bringing in food trucks to provide options for diners and shoppers.

The concept would be not to add competition, but to fill in gaps on days such as Sunday and Monday when most brick-and-mortar establishments are closed.

“If we continue to see these same issues leading into the spring of 2022, that’s something the Heart of Brevard would like to work on,” she said.

Shopping Local

Despite these challenges, most business people interviewed said they are reaping the benefits of high visitation and foot traffic. And, by adding to the expected delays in delivery for online orders, the supply chain disruptions might have an upside — highlighting the advantages of shopping local.

These include staffers at Theophilus who are trained “to help customers,” Carlton said. “We help them find gifts, we help them style their wardrobes. We gift wrap for free.”

And if the partner of a regular customer enters the store without a clue about the tastes of a wife or girlfriend, the store can search records of past purchases to home in on the perfect gift.

“I can be your best friend,” she said.

In-the-know residents can avoid lines at the original East Main Street location of the Cup & Saucer coffee shop by heading down an adjacent alley to access its addition, C & S Mercantile.

This space allowed the shop to add a kitchen and, thus, offerings of freshly prepared baked items, soups and sandwiches. And as the name suggests, it sells goods such as professional bakeware, spices and cookbooks.

But it also serves all the coffees and food available at the main location, said co-owner Elisabeth Nelson.

“It’s kind of a hidden gem down the alleyway,” Nelson said. “We nudge our locals, ‘If you want to skip the line of tourists, go down the alley.’ It’s kind of a good local thing to know about.”

Julie Stegeman is trying to nudge customers across Caldwell Street to her Stella's Sweet Boutique, on West Main Street a couple of blocks removed from the center of the downtown shopping district.

The store’s namesake mascot, a four-foot-high statue of a white squirrel, sits outside the shop as beacon for potential customers. And since the shop’s opening in September, it has steadily added to its menu, starting with cupcakes and other sweet treats, and developing a specialty in small plates combining sweet and savory flavors.

Customers can order “meat candy,” including a bacon-wrapped date stuffed with goat cheese and dark chocolate, seasoned with a dash of cayenne pepper and topped with a swirl of maple syrup. A turkey-and-cheese sandwich is served with a cranberry compote on a chocolate croissant.

“It’s delicious, I will say,” Stegeman said.

Building the business has meant a lot of exhausting hours, she said, but it’s a welcome change from her 30-year career as a nurse.

“I’ve done a lot of hospice and oncology and different nursing things that are not necessarily fun. I enjoyed it while I did it, but it took little chunks of my heart out and I just needed something to make me happy,” she said.

“And I’ve never seen anybody frown when they get a cupcake.”

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