Celebrating the Expansion of the Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Community Center
Vital community resource outfitted with new facilities.
After years of neighborhood input, planning, and construction, Asheville’s Southside neighborhood has a brand-new gymnasium, outdoor swimming pool, more community rooms for meetings and classes, outdoor basketball court, and spacious open areas to study and socialize.
The Grant Southside Center opened in 2010 on the site of the Livingston Street Park, at the corner of Depot and Livingston Streets in Asheville. For more than 30 years the Asheville Parks & Recreation Department operated in the former Livingston Street School, known as the W.C. Reid Center (now Arthur R. Edington Education and Career Center).
Asheville Parks & Recreation (APR), partnered with Southside residents to build on that legacy with the expansion of the Grant Southside Center being a smart investment that expands on the center’s original plan to bring valuable resources while building equity in this vibrant neighborhood.
“Even though the groundbreaking for this expansion took place just over 15 months ago, bringing a new gym and swimming pool to the Southside center has been a years-long journey,” said D. Tyrell McGirt, Parks and Recreation Director. “Everyone in the neighborhood knows its rich history—including Walton Street Park, home to the first park and pool for Asheville’s African American families during an era of government-sanctioned segregation.”
Grant Southside Center’s expansive enhancements are a major piece of APR’s investments in Southside’s legacy of community recreation. The new gym, pool, and outdoor areas mean community members can expect expanded programs such as community basketball, water aerobics, and fitness classes. Southside neighbors are invited to stop by the center to share their ideas to fill the center’s weekly schedule.
Expanding on this work, Asheville City Council designated Walton Street Park and Pool as a local historic landmark in 2022. The Historic Walton Street Park is also in the midst of a significant revitalization to accommodate neighborhood requests including a new playground, basketball courts, a lighted and paved walking loop, and a multipurpose recreation field. The park’s playground is APR’s eighth complete playground replacement since 2019. Several city departments and commissions continue to work closely with longtime Southside residents on ways to honor the legacy of the pool and preserve the space through adaptive reuse.
Happening Now
The Nasty Branch Greenway is a planned ¾-mile-long greenway that aims to be a museum without walls, relating the heritage of Southside prior to Urban Renewal projects within the Southside community. The greenway will begin at the Grant Southside Center and end at Phifer Street, near the McDowell and Southside intersection.
This greenway will feature a series of interpretive signs about the devastating impact of the razing of the Southside Community, a historically African American community, due to Urban Renewal in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
The City of Asheville is currently seeking first-hand information and feedback from Southside residents to finalize the signs and to tell the history of the Southside neighborhood before Urban Renewal. These signs will also give more detail to the significance of the name “Nasty Branch.”
The Nasty Branch Greenway, according to first-hand history, follows the banks of the creek that borders Grant Southside Center and flows through Choctaw Street Park to Southside Avenue. For information on the Nasty Branch Greenway design and construction, contact Lucy Crown, Transportation Department Planning Manager, [email protected].
Asheville Parks & Recreation
With its oldest parks dating to the 1890s, Asheville Parks & Recreation manages a unique collection of more than 65 public parks, playgrounds, and open spaces throughout the city in a system that also includes full-complex recreation centers, swimming pools, Riverside Cemetery, sports fields and courts, and community centers that offer a variety of wellness-, education-, and culture-related programs for Ashevillians of all ages.
Driven by its original promise that Asheville is a better and safer place when everyone from infants to retirees has the opportunity to be supported, healthy, and successful, Asheville Parks & Recreation was the first nationally accredited municipal recreation department in the United States.
For the latest updates, visit www.ashevillenc.gov/parks.
