Town Hardware invests in rebuilding Swannanoa with expansion

Iconic Black Mountain business to open second location in Beacon Village

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
September 18, 2025

Peter and Beth Ballhaussen, who have owned and operated Town Hardware & General Store in downtown Black Mountain since 2013, are opening a second location, Town Hardware Swannanoa, in Beacon Village. Photo by Fred McCormick

Beacon Village and downtown Black Mountain are only five miles apart, but each possess their own distinct charm, architecture and heritage. While the early 20th century commercial districts followed vastly different paths into their current iterations, their futures will be linked by a new connection when a popular local business expands in the Swannanoa Valley.

Town Hardware & General Store. which occupies a space that has supplied tools and equipment to Black Mountain residents and visitors in the center of downtown for nearly 100 years, is opening a second location —Town Hardware Swannanoa — in the heart of Beacon Village.

With an anticipated launch in early 2026, the store in the once-bustling downtown of the unincorporated community will dedicate the vast majority of its inventory to hardware, while featuring a garden center and offering small equipment rental, according to Peter and Beth Ballhaussen, who have carried on the tradition of running a centrally located hardware and general store in Black Mountain since purchasing the business in 2013. The Grovemont residents, active in community organizations including the Swannanoa Community Council, view the new venture as an opportunity to re-invest in their hometown.

“We’re already invested in Swannanoa,” Peter said. “We want to see this place come back strong and succeed, and we’re hoping this business can be a part of that.”

Beacon Village was constructed, beginning in the late 1920s, by Beacon Manufacturing Co., which operated a one-million-square-foot blanket mill in the center of the community until 2002. The building, once filled with as many as 2,300 employees, burned down the following year in one of the largest structure fires in the history of the state.

With employee homes built to the north and south of the mill, the company invested in establishing infrastructure, west of Whitson Avenue. The area, in its prime, was home to a bank, service station and a variety of merchants catering to the needs of Beacon workers and those arriving at the former train depot.

A brick building on Alexander Place, once the site of Berry’s Farm Supply, had been sitting empty for nearly 25 years when the Ballhaussens first encountered it last spring. The couple, who operate their store as a member of the Do It Best cooperative supporting approximately 9,000 independently owned home improvement businesses around the country, had been considering expansion for a couple of years.

“We were down here last March, and we’ve been friends with the Daniel and Emily since they were students at Montreat College,” Beth said. “We had been carrying their coffee in Black Mountain for some time, so we came here to an event where Blunt Pretzels had a food truck and Short Sleeves was giving out free coffee.”

At first glance, Peter quickly envisioned the vacant 4,200-square-foot 1940s structure across the street as an ideal space for a second location.

“It was Ward’s Drug Store before it was Berry’s, so it has a history of being a spot that serves the local community,” Peter said. “I could see it, even though it was rough, but the bones were there. Inside, we want to honor the history of Swannanoa, but we have the space to hold more hardware at a time when people need that. It will have a similar feel to the current Town Hardware, but we didn’t include the name ‘General Store,’ because our goal here is to utilize most of the space for hardware.”

Town Hardware & General Store in downtown Black Mountain features a selection of hardware materials throughout approximately half of its space. Town Hardware Swannanoa, which will open in early 2026 in Beacon Village, will feature a larger variety of building supplies. Photo by Fred McCormick

Town Hardware Swannanoa is leasing the Alexander Place location and access to 20 parking spaces in the adjacent First Baptist Church Swannanoa lot while renovations are underway, as Peter and Beth embrace joining a growing number of new businesses in the village. Blunt Pretzels, a community staple that opened in 2010 and served as a community hub and aid station in the aftermath of Helene, is across the street, while Short Sleeve Coffee opened earlier this year. Tucked behind it, locally owned The Rite Buy Grocery, plans to open its doors later this year.

Around the corner, on Smith Avenue, Ovenbird Kitchen has been serving artisan breads, baked goods, coffee and lattes since 2023, while Terra Nova Beer Co. launched the same year on Whitson Avenue.

An overarching vision for the area coalesced with the February of 2024 announcement of the ongoing construction of 4.7-acre bike park on the former site of the mill. The project, headed by founders of the Swannanoa-based insurtech company Quility, including Casey Watkins, grandson of former Beacon employees, is intended to restore vibrance to the village, which has struggled in the aftermath of the textile mill’s closure.

The current trajectory of Beacon Village is exciting and encouraging in the months after an unprecedented natural disaster devastated Swannanoa, according to Peter.

“We can feel this place transforming into what it will be in the future,” he said. “Having a hardware store right in the center of town will bring the people down here who are working to rebuild Swannanoa. At the same time, it represents a personal investment into this community for us.”

There will be some overlap of offerings in Black Mountain and Swannanoa, but the ability to utilize more space to feature hardware will result in a wider selection of construction items, tools and equipment, Peter added.

“One of the great things about our membership with Do it Best is that we can decide exactly what products we want in the store,” he said. “When we’re working with the design team, we’ll be able to select things that we think are needed in this community. The idea is for us to provide the best service possible to Swannanoa.”

For Beth, it “means everything” to bring the locally established Town Hardware name to the community they have called home for more than a decade.

“This community deserves to have Beacon Village become a thriving center for locals to enjoy,” she said. “We can’t wait to get to know more people in Swannanoa and help bring them back to the center of it.”