The Vacant Lot on Montford Avenue

For eleven years, the corner lot at Montford and Chestnut in Asheville, North Carolina sat empty. The textile mill that once anchored the neighborhood had closed in 2008, and the demolition crew left nothing but cracked concrete and ragweed. A faded sign from the county read "Future Site of Community Development," but nobody believed it. Residents called it "the broken promise lot."…