On January 14, Rainbow Community School purchased the three acre property at 60 State St, formerly the West Asheville Church of God. Rainbow’s new expanded campus will be 5 acres total– a large green space in the heart of West Asheville. Already, Rainbow’s campus is a designated Wildlife Habitat and the new property will include permaculture gardens, and plans to work with Riverlink to reduce heat-gain and water run-off from the old church parking lot.
This is going to impact West Asheville in many ways, most of which are explained in the Citizen Times article: http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20131201/NEWS01/312010079/Rainbow-Community-School-hopes-double-its-campus.
The new property includes a 300 seat auditorium/performance hall, which Rainbow intends to make available to non-profit organizations for rental use. Rainbow’s programming expansion will include classes for the community at-large. Other benefits include plans to develop a small park-like area along the West Asheville Corridor, which is being called a “community interaction area.” If all goes well, this area will be underneath the huge copper beech tree on Rainbow’s property, that is a designated Treasured Tree by Asheville Greenworks, so pedestrians walking by will be able to stop and rest under the tree.
From Executive Director, Renee Owen: “Thank you to West Asheville Businesses for being so supportive. With your help, we raised the money for the down payment to purchase the property. We will be fundraising over the next couple years to finance the development work, and hope to have the Haywood Road community interaction area developed within two to three years.”