Inside Zuma Coffee, it’s almost as if Tropical Storm Helene never ravaged downtown Marshall.
On April 17, seven months after the storm, a rotating cast of bluegrass musicians was on the mic, residents young and old were cuttin’ a rug, and the espresso machine was humming. With the walls repainted the same golden mustard yellow and red trim that’s welcomed patrons for decades, owner Joel Friedman’s cafe was back to being the place where Marshall gathered.
That’s a massive achievement, Friedman reflects, given that the cafe was inundated with more than 8 feet of water, blowing out its windows and carrying nearly all of its contents down Main Street during the Sept. 27 storm.
“It’s humbling, and all at the same time it just felt like nothing ever happened, and it was just another Thursday jam,” Friedman told Xpress the next morning over coffee, glancing around the cafe. “It just felt like we’re back. This is what we do.”
The cafe’s return is a significant milestone for the town of 800. It joins Mad Co. Brew House, which reopened March 28, and On Your Bike Coffee and Cycles as the downtown’s only operating food and beverage establishments as of mid-April.
Many others up and down Main Street are scrambling to relaunch in time for Marshall Magic Days, a downtown festival that organizers are billing as an “open house” showcasing the town’s recovery progress, Thursday-Sunday, May 1-4.
Plans for the gathering began in January, says Abigail Guyton, owner of OasisLtd. Records and co-organizer of the event. She notes how during these meetings, business owners decided, “Let’s reopen our doors together and show people that we’re all still here.”
The event kicks off with a ribbon-cutting at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 1, in front of the iconic Madison County Courthouse. Live music will be featured at various venues downtown throughout the weekend, and an art walk sponsored by the Madison County Arts Council will showcase sculptures and other works made from reclaimed flood debris. The event will also include an interactive children’s art project, according to a news release.
Long way to go
While many businesses hustle to reopen, parts of downtown are irrevocably damaged. Thirteen buildings were lost during the storm, says Town Administrator Forrest Gilliam. Meanwhile, several lots remain in disrepair with storm debris still scattered across them.
Marshall Town Hall, for example, which Gilliam says experienced a ceiling-high inundation, remains as it was in the days after Helene. As the southernmost building still standing on the west side of Main Street, part of its roof remains collapsed in on itself, partially propped up by a utility pole that was wedged underneath by the French Broad River’s swollen current.
Gilliam moved electronics and historic artifacts off the floor and onto higher surfaces within Town Hall before the storm to no avail, he notes. Marshall lost countless paper records and a server backup during Helene.
Marshall’s wastewater treatment plant, located on Blannahassett Island across the bridge from downtown, was also devastated during Helene. The town was forced to “pump and haul” its sewage to Metropolitan Sewerage District in Woodfin for two months, costing the town $150,000 a week, Gilliam says. With help from a N.C. Department of Environmental Quality loan, the town has been able to get its sewer plant functional again in the short term, though Gilliam acknowledges it’s not a long-term fix.
North of Town Hall on Main Street, downtown is dotted with hollow shops and storefronts in various states of repair. The former home of Nationwide Insurance remains empty, its sign dangling off the side of the building. Penland and Sons Department Store, a mainstay of more than 100 years, is targeting a summer return to business. Shady Side Florist still has plywood up in place of windows but has been selling flowers in its downtown space since late October, just weeks after the flood.
Important to locals, the post office remains boarded up at its location on the corner of Bridge and Main streets, and it’s unclear whether it will return downtown, Gilliam says. The U.S. Postal Service set up a temporary mobile office in the Farm Bureau parking lot on the U.S. 25/70 bypass after the storm.
Similarly, Gilliam is unsure what will happen to the iconic Madison County Courthouse in the center of downtown. The building has been cleared out and remediated, but no significant renovations have taken place. For years, Gilliam notes, the county has discussed moving the courthouse to a central location, making it more accessible to residents in Mars Hill and Hot Springs. In the aftermath of Helene, he continues, officials might take the opportunity to do so.
“To me, it’s always important to keep the essential, boring stuff down here too so that you have a few more people who need to eat lunch every day. We’re at risk of some of that not coming back,” Gilliam notes.
If the courthouse doesn’t return, Friedman hopes the building serves a community-oriented purpose rather than operating as a tourist draw to maintain the business district’s balance in serving both visitors and locals.
Staying relevant
The varied level of progress for downtown storefronts led some to push for a reopening event later in the year.
Gilliam has worries, for example, about welcoming hundreds of outsiders into a town that has condemned buildings throughout its business district. Additionally, the prevalence of debris is taking up usable parking spots.
Organizers are setting up a free shuttle on Saturday from the Madison Early College High School on the bypass to downtown that they hope will alleviate the parking problem.
Friedman says he and other business owners pushed to hold the town’s reopening the first weekend in June, which historically is when Marshall hosts its annual Mermaid Parade and Festival. The delay, he notes, would give the local contractor, Every Angle — which suffered significant losses from Helene — time to finish its many downtown projects.
But organizers landed on the beginning of May, in part, because Hot Springs is holding its Town and Trail Festival celebrating its own reopening the same weekend.
“We really wanted to do this as a whole Madison County thing,” Guyton says. “We’re coming back and doing it bigger and better than ever. We’re working with [the town of Hot Springs] to cross-promote, and hopefully people who come up for that will stop in Marshall on their way.”
Avia Perez, co-organizer of the event who also co-owns Main Street Comics and Games, says the goal is to ensure that Marshall remains relevant in the minds of those elsewhere in the region.
“We’ve been working really hard, and we’re just ready to get together for something joyful,” Guyton adds.
Even more invested
Given the significance of Marshall’s damage and its propensity to flood, some have questioned whether the town should rebuild at all on the narrow strip of floodplain wedged between the French Broad River and the steep slopes to the northeast of Main Street. But ultimately, Gilliam says there’s never been serious consideration for the town itself to embark on “mass scale change” for buildings that are still standing. He does acknowledge there are changes to consider, including ways to make the town’s properties more resilient.
For businesses, despite lingering questions about government-run services, most paused only briefly before pursuing renovations or rebuilding in the central business district.
“I feel even more invested in this community than I did before. You know, it was really scary to stand on Hill Street and watch our record racks float down the river,” Guyton notes. “It was hard to know whether we were going to reopen or rebuild, but seeing everybody down here 48 hours after the flood made us even more committed to staying here and being with this community.”
Perez, who lost most of her shop’s inventory in Helene, echoed Guyton’s commitment to Marshall. The sentiment is common.
At Zuma, Friedman didn’t initially think he was going to rebuild after 23 years in business. But when he arrived at the town’s makeshift resource hub at Nanostead, a tiny-home construction business, after a brief trip to Atlanta to see his mom, his car was quickly surrounded by neighbors happy to see him. They told him he was needed.
“When you have a community telling you they can’t rebuild without you, it’s pretty powerful,” he says. “That was the moment for me.”
One more cup of coffee
It’s the town’s recondite spirit, Friedman continues, that keeps everyone going.
“It’s unnamed,” he says. “You can’t really quantify that. You just know when you get here that you’re somewhere where you feel differently. Whether it’s the people here, whether it’s the railroad that you connect to or the river, or the combination of all that; it’s intangible. So that’s what we’re trying to keep going. How do you keep that feeling alive when you can’t really put a name to it?”
One illustration is Zuma’s custom tabletops, designed by local artist Lois Simbach. During the storm, the tables were washed out of the cafe like almost everything else. Months later, one was found 30 miles away in Del Rio, Tenn., and returned to Friedman. On Zuma’s first official day open, a second Simbach-designed tabletop was returned to Freidman after being found on Section 9 of the French Broad, just a few miles north of town.
Friedman had lots of emotion but “no words” to describe what it meant to get the tabletops back.
While hard to describe, the feeling is prevalent at bluegrass night. Maybe it’s the ghost of legendary Grammy-winning fiddle player Bobby Hicks, a Marshall local who started the Zuma bluegrass jam more than a decade ago, who kept people dancing. Hicks passed away in August, just a month before Helene. Even without Hicks leading the jam, fiddle player Casey Driessen, who made the trip April 17 from Asheville, says his presence was felt.
The next morning, customer after customer stuck their heads in through the front door of the cafe, cautiously optimistic that Zuma had a cup of coffee for them.
“I’m not open yet, but for you, I’ve got coffee,” Friedman remarked to a dozen former regulars hoping to catch a mugful of coffee and an earful of good wishes at their community cafe. Friedman, who has rebranded Zuma from “coffee and provisions,” a holdover rebrand from COVID times, to “coffee and community,” couldn’t help himself. He kept pouring cups, and the customers kept coming.
“It just feels so good to get a cup of coffee at Zuma again,” one customer exclaimed while walking in the door.
“It’s good to see you,” Friedman responds with a twinkle in his eye, mug in hand. Helene has left its mark, but Marshall hasn’t lost its magic.
