Swannanoa Valley Medical Center celebrates impactful sunset

Local nonprofit awards $1.4 Million to Area Organizations in final grant cycles

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
July 31, 2025

Members of the Swannanoa Valley Medical Center board gather, July 23, with representatives of local nonprofit organizations. The SVMC awarded $400,000 in grant funding to a dozen community groups in its final meeting. Photo by Fred McCormick

A celebratory atmosphere filled Town Corner Coworking above Town Hardware, July 23, as representatives from a diverse array of Swannanoa Valley-based nonprofit organizations and community institutions mingled between bites of hors d’oeuvres.

The gathering culminated in the dispersal of approximately $400,000 in grant funding to a dozen area organizations, marking an impactful sunset for the Swannanoa Valley Medical Center, which was dissolved after distributing a total of $1.4 million over the course of its final year.

Formally established in 1969, the SVMC grew from a grassroots effort to address a serious need in Swannanoa, Black Mountain and the surrounding areas, according to former administrator and board chair Kevin West.

“The impetus of the organization from the very beginning was to fund and construct a medical building out here in this part of the county,” he said. “There were no doctors in the Swannanoa Valley when I was growing up, you had to go to Asheville.”

With only two physicians serving the approximately 25,000 residents of the Swannanoa Valley at the time, community leaders organized hundreds of volunteers to raise funds to purchase property near the midpoint between Black Mountain and Swannanoa and construct office space that could be rented to medical professionals at a rate lower than the market value.

The SVMC acquired property at 997 Old U.S. 70 in 1971 for $25,000, due largely to the fundraising efforts of Ernest DeWick, and unveiled the 12,000-square-foot facility three years later. Hundreds of local volunteers raised more than $475,000 for the project.

“Since then, the SVMC basically operated the same way for decades,” said West, whose father was among the early supporters of the nonprofit. “The board was tasked with renting space to businesses in the medical field. It wasn’t free, but it was very subsidized, and that ensured we could keep medical professionals in the Valley.”

While the majority of the money accumulated through rent payments was used to maintain the facility, any extra funding was distributed, in the form of grants, to local organizations supporting health and wellness. West, who served as the SVMC administrator from 2013 to 2016, later returned to join the nonprofit’s board.

“The grant amounts varied from year to year, and we had some lean grant years because we were spending a great deal of money on the building itself,” West said. “We replaced the roof, completed a renovation of the facade and made other improvements to the building."

By 2022, the nonprofit approached an inflection point.

“We were sort of reaching a crescendo,” West said. “This group had been serving on the board for 10 years or more, and it wanted to go to the next step. The need for a building with low rental rates wasn’t the same as it was in 1974. There are many optometrists, dentists and other medical professionals all along U.S. 70.”

Mountain Child Advocacy Center Executive Director Carla Jones, left, receives a grant for $5,000, July 23, from the Swannanoa Valley Medical Center. Photo by Fred McCormick

The SVMC sold the building to Dr. Thomas Wolf, a longtime tenant and internal medicine physician with East Asheville Family Health Care. Following the transaction, the nonprofit organization remained committed to the vision of its founders, according to West.

“Our consensus was to continue our work by selling the building and giving the money back to the community, as an investment in the Swannanoa Valley,” he said. “We wanted to use this opportunity as a force multiplier for the other amazing nonprofit organizations that do so much for the people of this valley.”

In February of 2024, the SVMC opened a formal grant cycle for the first time in 10 years. The following July, the nonprofit awarded nearly $1 million to local institutions, including $225,000 to the Black Mountain Counseling Center, $150,000 to Bounty & Soul and $27,000 to Friends and Neighbors of Swannanoa (FANS). The organization also dispersed $30,000 to each of the Owen district’s Parent Teacher Organizations.

“We’re fortunate to have a lot of organizations helping people in the Swannanoa Valley,” West said. “We opened up a grant process, advertised it and connected with many of them. This was an involved process, with a detailed application, financial information and a thorough explanation of what they planned to do with the grant money. Every application was scrutinized.”

Members of the SVMC grant committee were committed to ensuring potential recipients would be “good fiscal stewards” of the funding, he added.

For its final cycle, the board identified 12 grantees to receive approximately $400,000 in funding. Those grants were dispersed in a ceremony that was followed by the formal dissolution of the SVMC.

Past and present members of the Swannanoa Valley Medical Center board, which was established in 1969, gather, July 23, to celebrate the final meeting of the nonprofit organization. Photo by Fred McCormick

The nonprofit awarded individual grants of $50,000 to the Swannanoa Valley Christian Ministry NeighborCare Clinic, Black Mountain Counseling Center, Black Mountain Home for Children, Bounty & Soul and the Swannanoa Community Council. Grants of $20,000 were given to the Friends of the Dr. John Wilson Community Garden and the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

The Owen Band Booster was given $68,300, which will fund a digital scorer’s table for the gymnasium, an athletic field mower, emergency response equipment and food security. Other recipients included the Mountain Child Advocacy Center, Buncombe County Rescue Squad, the Swannanoa Fire Department and the Black Mountain Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce.

All of the grants were given with “love and care,” according to SVMC treasurer Sharon Zeigler.

“A lot of us have been serving on this board for quite a while, and we’ve really watched the community grow, not just in terms of people, but in terms of outreach,” she said. “It’s really been amazing to witness and be a part of.”

Zeigler and her husband Carl were two of the 11 SVMC board members who attended to the body’s last meeting.

Throughout its 56-year history, the SVMC not only achieved its mission to bring medical services to the Swannanoa Valley, the organization partnered with other local nonprofits to promote health. In 2014, the organization granted a free two-year lease to Bounty & Soul, which was beginning to offer free produce markets at St. James Episcopal Church.

“I was on the vestry at St James when Ali came in with her idea to take over the welcome table which we were doing on Wednesday nights and turn it into a free market but she needed space,” said Sharon, who was then serving as the SVMC board secretary. “I then went home and talked to my husband, who was the president at the time, about the open space at the medical center. He called Father Scott and Kevin and arranged for (Bounty & Soul founder Ali Casparian) to come the next day to see our annex. Of all the things we’ve done, this one to me is the one I am most proud of, given how much Bounty & Soul impacts our Valley.”

As the sun sets on the service of the SVMC, serving his hometown through the organization has been “one of the honors of my life,” West said.

“This is the greatest group of people I’ve ever worked with,” he said. “It’s been very fulfilling to me, personally, but I think it will continue to do a lot of good in this community. I loved growing up here, and I believe it set in me a desire to help others, and that’s the same desire that this board has been committed to all these years.”