Music legends and up-and-comers love performing here, which means you might catch your favorite group on their way to Atlanta or Charlotte. The likes of Gladys Knight, Warren Haynes and Steve Martin all have ties to the area. Bluegrass and folk are rooted in the Appalachian mountains surrounding us, and yet the city is not too small to boast our own Asheville Symphony Orchestra. Asheville’s music scene has long been a mosaic of genres, talent and venues. McDowell would like to hear from you.Called Asheville “the new must-visit music city,” it wasn’t news to us. I want the school to be that community where you know you are going to be cared for and loved." "You just felt like you were surrounded by people who love you. "Everybody had the ability to nurture without question," he said. His most important memory of Reynolds, however, has nothing to do with the field or the building. "I went over to the school and saw that it had been taken over by a storage facility, and it was just godawful," he said. When I came back, I saw a lot of people had left and gone on to a better education. "The community used to be so well kept," he said, noting he left Canton in 1977. After the students left, the building became a storage facility for a junk dealer, he said. If I had the choice between Beverly Hills or growing up there, I would pick that place."ĭuring integration, it was consolidated into Pisgah High School, which opened in 1966 and is McDowell's alma mater. "People would give everything they had even though they didn't have a lot. "I don't even know how to describe something that hardly exists anymore," he said. His uncle was a standout on that squad, McDowell said. His grandfather was president of the Touchdown Club, the booster program for the football team. His mother worked as a cook at the historic African-American school. Reynolds wasn't just next to his home - it was an extension of home. He's been interested in rehabbing the property for almost 10 years. The building and 6.5-acre property is valued at $78,100, according to tax records. The 20,000-square-foot, one-story school was built in 1930. McDowell purchased the school property in December at an auction for $80,000. Knight and McDowell bought a home in Fairview in 2005, but live and work primarily in Las Vegas. He also plans to raise money for the project, and he and Knight aim to stage a benefit concert in Asheville. I want to have that all done by the summer." "One of my uncles asked to put a track there so the elderly could walk there. "I want to have the football field cleared," he said. The track is the first on McDowell's to-do list, the costs of which he estimates will be about $2 million. Or children could take etiquette courses or the elderly could walk safely around a new track. He envisioned it as an "all-service" building, where Knight would love to teach music classes for kids. The project will "show we do have some pride in what we own and the blessing of how people treated me growing up," said McDowell, who grew up 20 yards from the school. The next steps include completing the clean up and finalizing architectural renderings, he said. "Gladys was painting the walls herself," McDowell said.Īfter holding community meetings, McDowell also has a clearer vision of what the center will include: a theater, library, computer lab, a diner and an outdoor walking track. Knight and McDowell worked on the property Monday. In the last six months, the group has cleared the overgrown football field and parking lot, and has taken "about 75 percent of the junk out of the building," McDowell said. He views the center as a way to return the investment this community made in him, McDowell said. Since this winter, McDowell and his Reynolds High School Community Restoration Foundation -have worked together to clean up the Reynolds School property on Reynolds School Road in Canton into a vibrant community center. "I was just at the White House for Michele (Obama's) birthday party, and I looked around thought, how did I come from this town and get here? How did I get the confidence to do that? The confidence came from that place." "When I left this small town, I had the confidence to do anything that I wanted to do," he said in February. The Canton community nurtured McDowell, who went on to own jewelry stores, work in real estate and now helps run an artist development company with his wife, legendary soul singer Gladys Knight. William McDowell says he wouldn't trade the Western North Carolina mountains of his youth for a hometown in Beverly Hills.
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