Excitement buzzed in the parking lot of Lowe’s in East Asheville, NC, on May 2, as a sea of red-vested associates, loyal customers, vendors, and local and state dignitaries gathered to celebrate the store’s grand reopening. Several people in the crowd wiped tears as children from nearby Bell Elementary School sang “Lean on Me,” and “We Are the World.” The crowd erupted in cheers as store leaders and dignitaries used electric saws to ceremonially cut boards.
Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, the East Asheville location has been restored to its former glory after suffering widespread devastation when Hurricane Helene ravaged the region on September 27, 2024.
As soon as the flood waters receded, store manager Joe Strong and some of his associates raced to the building to inspect the damage. It was worse than he could imagine. The water blasted out all the windows and doors and collapsed the roof of the 34,000 square foot garden center area. Inside the 120,000 square-foot main building, flood waters floated merchandise off the shelves and deposited items in mud drenched piles. Nothing was salvageable.
“The store was total destruction. The flood waters rose more than 13 feet,” says Strong. “In some places there was three feet of mud. In the first days afterwards, crews removed 60 dump trucks full of mud from the store.”
With cleanup and restoration underway, Lowe’s worked rapidly to set up a pop-up shop in the parking lot of the Asheville Mall to continue serving customers. Strong says they also focused on securing temporary placement for their workers at other area Lowe’s stores. A few of them stayed at the reassigned stores, but 105 workers have returned to work in east Asheville.
“Any time I visited workers at the other stores, many said it didn’t feel like home. It feels so good to get them back home,” says Strong.
Store associate Loveada “Addie” Scarborough briefly covered her eyes with her hands as she broke out in tears recalling the devastation of Helene, which not only consumed her workplace of 21 years, but also left her homeless when a tree crashed into her house leaving irreparable damage. To make the situation even more challenging, she has been undergoing chemotherapy treatments for metastatic breast cancer. She sums up the experience as a “hard nightmare.”
The reopening of the store gives her a renewed sense of hope and reason to smile again.
“I love this store,” she says at her station in Home Decor. “I am so grateful it is open. When Joe said, ‘Are you ready to come back?’ I would have danced all the way here if I could. This is my second family. Things will never be normal-normal again, but we can create a new normal and make it even better.”
Two of the directors of BeLoved Asheville, Amy Cantrell and Ponkho Bermejo, stood front and center at the grand reopening as they celebrated. Their organization, launched in 2009, has been vital in helping people of the region recover from life’s obstacles, before, during and after Helene, including building and repairing homes.
“Before Helene, we were in this Lowe’s five times a day,” says Bermejo. “It’s like our second home.”
“It felt like having two arms held behind our backs by not having this place. We were the first sale at the pop-up location at the mall. Today is a powerful day. It’s so beautiful,” says Cantrell. “It brought tears to my eyes just driving in the parking lot.”
Strong takes great pride in how Lowe’s stepped up to help the community even as the company grappled with its own loss and recovery efforts. The company has donated nearly $14 million to relief efforts in Western North Carolina and other impacted areas.
He highlights a few of the initiatives: “We donated more than 100 tiny homes to help hurricane victims,” Strong says. “We were giving out free ice, free cases of water and in some cases free generators. At Thanksgiving, we served meals at six different stores. It was an awesome sight to see—neighbors helping neighbors and seeing a big company like Lowe’s helping the community here. The resiliency of the people here in Western North Carolina is strong.”
