The Black Mountain Brewing situation is newsworthy

Government officials Have no Say on what stories should and shouldn’t be Reported

Fred McCormick
Columnist
The Valley Echo
December 7, 2025

Black Mountain Brewery, which has operated released a plea for support, Nov. 25, following a reduction in permitted occupancy last August. Photo by Fred McCormick

When I am not writing news stories, I spend much of my time consuming them. So, while I was not surprised by a report that aired on a local television station, Dec. 2, I was disheartened.

To be clear, what follows is not a news story. It is my informed and carefully considered opinion, as clearly designated at the top of this page, on a topic I have been monitoring for some time.

Like many local residents, I was sitting in front of my television Tuesday evening watching the news on ABC affiliate WLOS. Twenty-four hours earlier, I watched another story on the same subject. A quick preview at the top of the 6 p.m. broadcast teased an upcoming segment on the closure of the top deck at Black Mountain Brewing. I had read countless social media comments on this subject during the previous week, so I was curious about the “town’s response” the promotion referenced. 

The situation involving the brewery, which opened its doors in 2018, became public when the Broadway Avenue business posted a plea for support on its social media platforms. The message stated that an order issued by the town, before Labor Day weekend, called for the closure of the brewery’s top deck, significantly reducing the permitted occupancy. 

Black Mountain Brewing claimed the impact of the order has been “devastating” for the business, citing furloughed employees and an adjacent food truck, struggling to make ends meet. 

Credit to WLOS reporter Elijah Skipper for reaching out to both business owner John Richardson and the Town of Black Mountain. He produced multiple stories about the situation over the course of several days, but one piece, ironically titled “Story that isn’t a story,” grabbed my attention. 

It wasn’t the interview with Steve Paulson, the owner and operator of Open Oven who endured a similar experience with the town. Many people around Black Mountain have long been aware of that issue, after the Church Street eatery opened a popular rooftop bar that operated for a year before local officials ordered its closure and removal in 2023. 

Although, his perspective was relevant in the context of the Black Mountain Brewing deck scenario, which involves a structure that had been fully operational since 2021, before being deemed non-compliant four years later. 

From what I pieced together through the information I gathered over months, a key safety concern at Black Mountain Brewing is related to its location in the Town of Black Mountain’s primary fire district overlay, which requires specific measures, including building materials, adherence to setbacks and square footage limitations designed to mitigate risks in the densely constructed downtown. The potential remedies for the brewery’s current conundrum include enclosing the approximately 768-square-foot structure, while either installing a sprinkler system, or eliminating that requirement by constructing the enclosure 42 inches above the top level and removing the roof. Another option would be to pursue Chapter 14 of the N.C. Existing Building Code, which allows relocatable buildings to gain compliance through performance.

There does not appear to be an easy path upon which to work around some of the complexities of these issues.

Despite a painstakingly thorough eight-page statement, released, Dec. 3, by the town, precisely why or how the upper level was allowed to be occupied by residents and seasonal visitors alike for four years, within view of the most heavily trafficked road in the central business district, remains difficult to fully comprehend.

Of course, my assessment is incomplete, because when I reached out to the town’s building inspector to request an interview or information, back in early September, he referred me to the planning director. Before I could contact that direct supervisor, as advised, I received an email from the town manager stating there was nothing to discuss because code violations happen regularly. 

Three months later, an incredibly detailed document and timeline, following a televised story, or non-story, depending on who one asks, does not align with my understanding of the root word, “regular.” It is difficult to reconcile why a report that was characterized by a town official as not a story, as recently as 24 hours before the information was shared with the public, required such a tedious recounting of events.

The response to my initial contact about the brewery’s deck caused me to become slightly wary, an uncomfortable rarity in more than a decade of covering local government in Black Mountain. That feeling was exacerbated a few weeks later when I published a simple and completely unrelated piece reporting on the Oct. 13 regular monthly meeting of the town council. 

The story quoted local residents and elected officials who advocated for repairs to reopen the Lakeview Senior Center, which has been unable to host activities for seniors since Tropical Storm Helene.

In response to the piece, which relied primarily on public information expressed on the record in town hall, I received another unsolicited email from the town manager, Josh Harrold. This one, sent from his town email address at 11:08 p.m., Oct. 16, was a little lengthier and far less professional, implying the story was dishonest, concluding with, “I would encourage you to write a story based on the truth,” without citing a single example of a disputed fact. The exchange did, however, include a vague assertion that the town is in its current “situation,” without elaboration, due to “poor planning” from prior elected officials and administrations. There are many “truths” that need to be told, he added. Harrold also expressed fascination with that story using quotes from the town’s mayor, Mike Sobol, which I found odd because the mayor, who was speaking on the public record at the time, is an elected political figure, while employees are not.

For additional context, Harrold has been in his current position for seven years, following a stint as the town’s planning director, from 2014 to 2017. In that time, he never made a single mention of some cryptic unknown information, although he also never emailed me in the middle of the night with some bizarrely accusatory statements about a story that had nothing to do with him. Nobody from the town had before this interaction. A few days later, the town did not renew an advertisement that had been running on The Valley Echo for five years.

Consequently, I did not know what to make of all this, and I still don’t.

Since the story on the Lakeview Center is still up, linked here, the entire video of the meeting remains on the town’s YouTube channel and the emails from town employees using their government email accounts are public record, anyone can review these facts.

I suppose the only people with the authority to get to the bottom of this would be his bosses, the five elected officials serving on the town council. Yet, among the business items proposed for the upcoming town council meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m., Monday, Dec. 8, is a proposal to adjust rules of decorum for public comments during in town meetings. This resolution, according to the agenda, “affirms the Town’s commitment to civil engagement and respectful exchange of viewpoints during public meetings.”

I would contend that similar rules should be equally applied to town staff sending unsolicited and unwarranted emails on the public record, but such expectations are typically already in place for government employees.

Currently, I am forced to recalculate my standing with the administrator, following an interaction that left me unsettled, mainly because we maintained a professional and pleasant relationship, with appropriate boundaries, for almost a decade. I never questioned his integrity, as he did mine, prior to this, nor had I received that kind of backlash from him for anything I have written, especially in response to an easily verifiable story that reported words actually uttered in a public forum and streamed on the internet. 

A couple of weeks after that story was published, at least two other news outlets covered a special called meeting in which the town council voted, unanimously, to approve plans to proceed with temporary repairs to the top floor of the senior center. While that outcome afforded me a slight feeling of vindication, I have received no word from the town on if those larger corporate media outlets received the same level of scorn that my small local independent news operation did, or if this method of communication with reporters represents a chilling new unofficial policy of our local government.

This was the context available to me as I tuned into the WLOS news broadcast about the town’s latest interaction with a local business owner, so it tracked when Harrold, reportedly through a written communication, alleged the news station, broadcasting locally for 71 years, was “pushing a story that isn’t a story.”

I do not know what that means in this context, or why the town administrator’s misguided preoccupation with a profession of which he appears to have little understanding would be relevant to factual reporting. A simple, “the town is unable to comment on this matter at this time” would have sufficed, and almost certainly allowed the entire community to save face in the midst of a delicate situation. What I do know, as a longtime journalist, is that he was wrong, because it was definitely a story by any definition or interpretation of the word. In fact, it appears to be a popular one that has spawned several follow-up stories, sparking an ongoing dialogue within the community and online.

The town’s press release on the subject alludes to the notion that “rumors have spread,” while failing to mention the very real journalism done by an established local news source. It should go without saying, but just in case, these two things are not the same, and muddying the water on which is which does not serve the public. In all, the “statement of facts,” an interesting euphemism for a simple press release regarding the story that isn’t a story, contained nearly 3,200 words. As a writer, the first thing I noticed was that the document begins with an introductory “narrative,” a common synonym for the word, “story.”

It is also important to note that following an Aug. 11 story (linked here) by The Valley Echo, regarding the installation of a fence around property at 141 South Richardson Avenue, also owned by Richardson, and a Sept. 8 town council meeting (linked here) in which councilmember Doug Hay stated the barrier made Sutton Avenue “more dangerous,” the Town issued another press release. In it, officials stated the fence around the property was installed “to protect and promote the health, safety and general welfare of the town.” That statement, released, Sept. 15, addressed “rumors and misinformation” in the opening paragraph, without further specification.

It is both inappropriate and impossible for me to “take a side” in the dispute regarding the safety or compliance of the deck at the brewery, since I am not a professional builder, administrator, inspector, attorney or engineer. My own personal and professional standards do not allow me to consider myself qualified to hold strong opinions about subjects in which I do not possess adequate competence. Additionally, there are multiple parties involved, each with their own individual or collective interests to protect. Unfortunately, I do not feel comfortable covering any of it, in-depth, due to my aforementioned concerns about the crossing of professional boundaries by the town manager.

This is uncharted territory for me, as a local journalist who lives in the very small town I cover, due to an email I did not want and wish I had not received.

But, relevant and reasonable questions on the subject of the brewery, as a simple matter of public interest, might include clarification of the town’s policy on following up on inspections not requested by property owners; who was responsible for oversight of the retired inspectors named specifically in the documentation; why and how were conditions alleged to be in violation of state law allowed to continue for years without the necessary safeguards from the town; were the people utilizing the deck in any kind of danger and what is the appropriate level of responsibility to be shared between individual business owners and town personnel in a situation like this?

Also, and perhaps most importantly, how is this happening for the second time in a few years under the same administration, and what is the likelihood of it happening again? Is it symptomatic of a larger problem? If so, has the town identified that problem and what is it? If it happens to another business, will it be considered a legitimate news story or dismissed as “rumors” by the town while being cited as a regular code violation to those interested in understanding it? What was the similar project in April of 2024 that raised concerns prompting the town’s broader review of downtown structures? Is a news reporter out of line for wondering these things?

More questions, related to the town’s relationship with and respect for the profession of journalism, the readers it serves and who the town, or Harrold, specifically, believes has standing to inquire or write about very public matters, should, in my opinion, be asked on the record by the town council.

As a brief thought exercise, imagine a world in which unelected officials, with the full weight of local government at their disposal, are bestowed the authority to arbitrarily decide what is and isn’t news. They already have the right to refuse comment, which is completely within the bounds of appropriate professional behavior and actually a very normal and justifiable response in many scenarios.

What I know, based on living and working in this town and speaking, face to face, to many others who also live and work here, is that a sense of tension, anxiety and more than a little fear, unrelated to the situation at Black Mountain Brewing, lingers among some of them who are not comfortable speaking on the record. It is a trepidation, based upon my own recent and uncharacteristically fraught experiences with the town, that is relatable, and also made this opinion column difficult to write.

Yet, I was compelled to do so by concerned and confused members of the public seeking clarification on this saga that is becoming increasingly hard to decipher, or even avoid.

While a traditional news piece on the situation involving Black Mountain Brewing would likely have provided the healthiest means of public discourse and offer easily digestible information to potentially allay the concerns of residents and business owners, the town inexplicably chose to publicly question the newsworthiness of the story itself, before inundating the public with a metaphoric firehose of information that conspicuously and repeatedly included the names of former employees who haven’t worked for the local government in three to four years, but were presumably under the supervision of some who currently do.

So, I am offering my perspective, as a citizen who cares very much about this community. The nuance and complexity of the issues surrounding the brewery’s deck make it nearly impossible to declare one side as simply right or wrong, so the effort to do so is futile. Be skeptical of anyone on social media who speaks on this topic authoritatively, as though they have a complete understanding, because I can assure you they don’t. Personally, I have yet to be convinced anyone does.

The larger and more consequential story, as I see it, involves a small town, slowly and painfully recovering from an unprecedented natural disaster, where public rifts between staff, elected officials and even private citizens have become more frequent, while a growing number of local businesses, the lifeblood of our microeconomy, are unsure if the permits they are operating under are worth the paper they are printed on or the digital storage space they inhabit.

These are the truly sympathetic figures weathering this current climate, based on the substantial feedback I have received. This is not the Black Mountain I know.