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Removal Of Vance Monument Can Move Forward After Judge Denies Motion To Halt It

Matt Bush
/
Blue Ridge Public Radio

Removal of the Vance Monument from downtown Asheville's Pack Square can move forward after a Buncombe County judge denied a motion to halt it Monday.

Superior Court judge Steven Warren ruled against a motion to stop the removal of the 65-foot obelisk, which was completed in 1898 and is named for Zebulon Vance, North Carolina's governor during the Civil War and U.S. Senator during Reconstruction. 

The motion was part of a lawsuit filed last week by The Society for the Historical Preservation of the 26th North Carolina Troops Inc.  The suit alleges removal would violate a 2015 contract the group has with the city to restore the monument, something it says it raised more than $138,000 to do. 

The city has asked the court to dismiss the suit entirely. The lawsuit was filed after last Tuesday's 6-1 vote by city council to remove the monument. 

The next steps are to award a contract to remove the scaffolding on the obelisk, and then demolish it.  The scaffolding was put up last summer to shroud the monument once a task force was created to study its future. 

The city has received five bids for the contract, which range from $114,000 to $495,000 in cost.  Once the monument is gone, the site will be temporarily turned into a flower garden while a long-term plan for the site is completed.  The city hopes to have the monument gone by the summer, and the long-term plan finished by the end of the year. 

Zebulon Vance and his family enslaved people prior to the Civil War, and he fought vehemently against civil rights for Black Americans as a U.S. Senator after it. 

Asheville City Schools dropped his name from an elementary school earlier this year.  Statues of Vance remain at the North Carolina Capitol in Raleigh and in the U.S. Capitol.

Copyright 2021 BPR News. To see more, visit BPR.org.

Matt Bush joined Blue Ridge Public Radio as news director in August 2016. Excited at the opportunity the build up the news service for both stations as well as help launch BPR News, Matt made the jump to Western North Carolina from Washington D.C. For the 8 years prior to coming to Asheville, he worked at the NPR member station in the nation's capital as a reporter and anchor. Matt primarily covered the state of Maryland, including 6 years of covering the statehouse in Annapolis. Prior to that, he worked at WMAL in Washington and Metro Networks in Pittsburgh, the city he was born and raised in.