By Karl Plume and Rich McKay
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (Reuters) -The river that runs through Asheville, North Carolina, is littered with artwork drifting downstream after deadly floods from Hurricane Helene decimated the mountain city's arts district, a linchpin of tourism in the area that some residents fear will never recover.
Some of the 300 artists and designers who work out of 26 buildings along the banks of the French Broad River have spent the past few days shoveling out mud and trying to salvage paintings, pottery and jewelry. Some fear the district may never be the same.
Fine arts photographer Karen Maugans, 61, said floodwaters swept her framed photos out of her gallery's windows and sent them downriver along with furnishings.
"I'm numb right now," she said. "It's unreal. This doesn't happen here. Every single thing I had was underwater."
Her gallery was on the first floor of a two-story building that saw floodwaters as high as the roof, she said.
Located along a one-mile (1.6-km) stretch of Asheville, the River Arts District has been the heart of Buncombe County's tourism industry, filled with breweries, shops and cafes and offering workshops for hobbyists and aspiring artists.
Tourism made up one-fifth of the county's total gross domestic product in 2023, according to Explore Asheville. The arts district generated $1 billion in sales and supported 8,500 jobs, according to data from Arts AVL, the designated arts agency for Buncombe County.
But with many local businesses in ruins – and local and state officials facing months of costly cleanup work to restore ravaged roads, power and water systems – that tourist revenue and the future of the art galleries, breweries and restaurants is under serious threat.
"A lot of our businesses were just beginning to recover from closures during COVID," said Katie Cornell, executive director of Arts AVL. "I'm afraid this is going to make COVID look like a cakewalk."
Pottery artist Michael Hofmann's studio escaped major damage, but he has doubts about whether the district can ever resemble what it was before the storm.
"I was already concerned about the face of the River Arts District because the developers were coming in and buying up the land and putting up these huge apartment complexes," he said in an interview. "The land was more valuable and the rents were going up."
Helene came ashore in Florida last week as a major Category 4 hurricane. The storm has killed at least 200 people across six states, according to CNN, making it one of the deadliest U.S. hurricanes since 2000, trailing Maria in 2017 and Katrina in 2005.
It pulverized many communities nestled in the forested Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina and neighboring Tennessee. Restoring roads and power and water systems will take weeks or months.
In Asheville, the storm-swollen river reached 25 feet (7.6 meters), breaking the 23-foot (7-meter) record set in 1895, according to the National Water Prediction Service.
Some of the arts district's buildings have been reduced to rubble. Others are off-limits, with city officials warning tenants they may collapse. Many of the artists there work multiple jobs and live hand-to-mouth to make their rent.
Broken art frames and wooden pallets still littered the ground on Thursday. An odor of mud and chemicals washed downstream filled the air as a few mud-caked artists loaded a dumpster with broken furniture.
The district was once home to stockyards, tanneries, cotton mills, meat processing plants, and shoe and furniture factories.
Urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s displaced many of the Black-owned businesses from the area.
Artists began moving into the district in 1985, and it received official designation in 2005. Jeffrey Burroughs, the president of the River Arts District Artists association, called it the "gem of the city."
"It's tough going," Burroughs said. "I'd say 80 percent of the arts district is mostly rubble now. Whole studios went down the river. The water filled us up like a bowl."
The district is in a floodplain in one of the lowest-lying areas of the city, and some artists fear there will be restrictions on rebuilding or that chain stores will take over buildings.
Burroughs, who owns a jewelry gallery in the district, said some tenants in intact buildings were offering to share their gallery space with less fortunate neighbors.
The painter Mark Bettis has a gallery that survived the storm, and has been helping his neighbors pick through the debris.
"We're worried that some big-box stores could gobble this up, change the flavor of the district," Bettis said. "But we're mountain strong. I'm hoping enough of this will survive, or Asheville is changed forever."