The pump track going into Swannanoa this fall won't just be the largest in North Carolina. It will be the largest in the Americas. That detail alone tells you something has shifted in a community that spent two decades watching a former blanket mill sit empty, flood, and fall further into disrepair.
Beacon Bike Park is under construction on an 8.5-acre portion of the old Beacon Manufacturing Company site off the Swannanoa Valley floor, with an opening scheduled for September 2026. The park features a Velosolutions pump track, the Swiss-based design company behind some of the best bike infrastructure in the world. When it opens, it will be the largest Velosolutions installation in North and South America.
The project comes from the Beacon Foundation, a nonprofit led by co-founders Casey Watkins, Meredith Ellison, and Brandon Ellison, the same team behind Quility, a Swannanoa-based insurtech company. A $4.5 million investment from Explore Asheville and Buncombe County's Tourism Development Authority compressed what was originally a five-year build timeline into roughly ten months. That acceleration matters in a valley still working through Hurricane Helene recovery.
Beyond the pump track, the park includes bouldering and climbing walls, a mile-long walking trail, a playground, and a 4,000-capacity outdoor events lawn designed for concerts, festivals, and competitions. The design accommodates all abilities, meaning bikes, skateboards, inline skates, and adaptive wheelchairs share the same space. The plan also includes youth programming, after-school services, and summer camps, with any operational surplus going back to the community or to Helene recovery partners.
The bike park is phase one of a larger 40-acre redevelopment called Beacon Village. The former mill, once the largest blanket manufacturer in the world before it closed in 2002 and burned in 2003, is being redeveloped as a mixed-use destination with space for outdoor industry businesses, light manufacturing, and attainable housing. The Economic Development Coalition for Asheville-Buncombe County has a role in the project, with a focus on living-wage employers and community-minded tenants.
What stands out right now, even before the park opens, is who is already moving in nearby. Short Sleeves Coffee, Rite Buy Grocery, and Town Hardware General Store have all announced plans to operate near the Beacon site. Daniel Sapp of the Beacon Foundation summed it up: "Now it's Swanna-somewhere because it's different."
That line means something if you know the valley. Swannanoa sits just east of Asheville along I-40, close to everything in Buncombe County but historically overlooked in favor of bigger names. Helene hit the valley hard in September 2024, and recovery has been uneven. The questions about what comes next for this stretch of the valley are real, and not everyone agrees a bike park is the answer.
Some residents have raised legitimate concerns about whether tourism-driven development addresses the housing, food access, and economic stability needs of longtime Swannanoa families. The Beacon Foundation has committed to redistributing operational surplus toward community needs. Those commitments will be measured over time, not at the ribbon cutting.
From a real estate standpoint, Beacon Village is a development worth following. The 40-acre site is zoned as an employment district, allowing for hotels, restaurants, small multifamily housing, and commercial uses alongside the park and light manufacturing. Attainable housing is part of the stated plan. For buyers and investors looking at the Swannanoa Valley corridor, the combination of proximity to Asheville, outdoor amenity, and sustained institutional investment makes this a pocket of the region that is easy to underestimate right now.
For now, the most visible thing is the pump track taking shape on what was recently an overgrown brownfield. A Velosolutions build of this scale in a small mountain community does not happen by accident. Years of planning and a clear bet that Swannanoa's location and landscape are exactly what draws people to Western North Carolina in the first place produced this.
The park opens in September. If you want to see what Swannanoa looks like when it gets its moment, that is probably the day to show up.