Downtown Clyde Is About to Rise Five Feet. Here's What That Actually Looks Like This Summer.

For four years, the Clyde Downtown Elevation Project has lived mostly on paper. Engineering renderings, grant applications, FEMA correspondence, town board updates. If you live here, you have probably stopped expecting to see a backhoe. That is changing. The town anticipated FEMA review of the construction deliverables in early 2026, per Town Manager Joy Garland, and once those clear, K-9 Curriculum on Charles Street is slated to be the first downtown building physically lifted off the floodplain.

That is the story of Clyde in 2026. Not a headline about population growth or a new subdivision. A very slow, very expensive attempt to keep a downtown that has taken on water from Ivan, Frances, Fred, and Helene, and lift it out of reach.

If you already live here, this affects the walk you take to the salon, the block where you park, and the view from the river bridge. It is worth understanding what is about to happen on the ground.

The short version: sixteen downtown businesses are participating, buildings will be raised roughly five feet, and the first ground has to break before the rest of the block can plan around it.

K-9 Curriculum Is the Guinea Pig

Lisa Monteith's dog training and grooming shop reopened in April 2025 in a limited capacity after months of Helene repairs. Now she is going to close it again, temporarily, so the building can be raised. In her words to The Mountaineer, she is ready to "get rocking and rolling."

The plan raises the ground floor of K-9 Curriculum by about five feet. That is not a metaphor. The homemade high-water sign Monteith kept on the exterior wall, which sits roughly halfway up, will end up well below the new first floor. The building next door is also slated for elevation, though the sequencing there is not locked.

The reason Monteith goes first matters. Every subsequent building on the block gets to learn from what her project reveals about cost overruns, plumbing tie-ins, ADA transitions from the sidewalk, and how long the temporary relocation actually takes. If you have wondered why the town has not just started all sixteen at once, this is why. Someone has to be the guinea pig.

The Real Cost Sits With the Owners

The elevation itself is funded through a FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant. What is not funded is everything specific to how each business actually operates. This is the piece that gets buried in the celebratory press releases.

Monteith is on the hook for the plumbing associated with her three dog-wash stations. Kristin Owens, who owns 74 Mane Salon and is also participating, told The Mountaineer she has already put multiple thousands of dollars into Helene repairs and will now pay for the additional plumbing a salon needs once the building sits five feet higher. Owens described her challenge as working with the project's designers, NC State's Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, to make sure her business's specific needs still work after elevation.

Sixteen different businesses. Sixteen different lists of owner-side expenses that do not appear in the grant totals. That is a useful thing for neighbors to know before assuming this is a fully paid public project. It is not. It is a hybrid, and the small business owners on the block are carrying real costs.

The $737,477 Sidewalk Grant Is a Separate Animal

There has been some public confusion about which grant does what. The elevation work and the sidewalk work are two different projects with two different funding streams.

In July 2025, Governor Josh Stein visited Clyde to highlight a Small Business Infrastructure Grant of $737,477 for the Downtown Clyde Commercial Business District Repair Project. That money, per the state Department of Commerce, goes toward sidewalks, curb appeal, and downtown parking. Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley framed it as speeding recovery by helping people walk downtown again.

For residents, the practical read is that sidewalk and parking improvements can move on a different clock than the elevation work. You may see curb repair crews before you see any building physically lifted. You may also see the reverse. The two projects were funded through different mechanisms under the state's Disaster Recovery Act of 2025 and the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, and they answer to different reviewers.

The Floodable Park Is the Piece Most Neighbors Haven't Heard About

In February 2026, Governor Stein and the Department of Environmental Quality announced $5.7 million in French Broad River Basin flood resilience projects. One of them was the Town of Clyde Downtown Floodable Riverfront Park.

Here is what is on the drawing board:

1. Transform 1.08 acres of former FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program buyout properties into a public floodable park along the Pigeon River.
2. Use native-planted zones to direct and contain flooding and improve stormwater quality.
3. Tie into the broader downtown resilience package alongside the elevation and sidewalk work.

Two things are worth pausing on here. First, these are not vacant lots. They are the parcels where neighbors' houses used to stand before the post-Ivan buyouts. That is the land the park will occupy. Second, a "floodable" park is designed to flood. That is the point. When the Pigeon rises, the park absorbs it, and the roads and downtown buildings above it take less damage. If you have walked past those lots for twenty years and wondered what the town would eventually do with them, this is the answer, and it aligns with priorities in the Town of Clyde Land Use Plan and Pedestrian Master Plan.

What This Actually Looks Like Between June and Labor Day

Nobody has published a construction calendar yet, and the Mountaineer noted the construction timeline is unknown pending competitive bidding. But there are a few things a resident can reasonably plan around this summer.

• Parking will be worse before it gets better. Sidewalk repair alone will pull curb space offline.
• K-9 Curriculum is going to move to a temporary location during construction, so if you use it, expect a signed rerouting.
• 74 Mane Salon is participating, so expect the same at some point on Owens's timeline.
• The Museum of Haywood County History at the Shook-Smathers House at 178 Morgan Street is not part of the elevation project and stays on its normal schedule. The Pioneer Heritage Festival still uses it as a venue.
• Haywood Community College at 185 Freedlander Drive is well outside the downtown work zone, so campus events, including the summer nursing program info sessions, are unaffected.

Where to Eat and Where to Get Coffee While the Block Is a Mess

The downtown work zone is small. Most of the places Clyde residents actually eat sit outside it, and none of them are going anywhere this summer.

• Sherrill's Pioneer Restaurant on the west side is still opening at 4:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday, which remains one of the earliest breakfasts in Haywood County.
• 5 Points Restaurant on Crabtree Road and Pilot Pizza at 3712 Crabtree are both outside the elevation footprint.
• The Scotsman Public House, Blue Rooster Southern Grill, Haywood 209 Cafe, and Mack's Shack BBQ continue to show up on the top of local Yelp and Tripadvisor lists for the 28721 zip code.
• If you want to stay closer to the river, River Farm Escape off Fines Creek continues its summer Stompin' at River Farm music series through August.
• The Fines Creek Annual Fish Fry Fundraiser is on the calendar for September 19, 2026, which is a useful anchor date if you are trying to plan around downtown construction noise.

The through-line is that the elevation project touches a very specific set of buildings on a very specific set of blocks. The rest of Clyde, the part most residents actually inhabit day to day, keeps running.

Why This Summer Matters Even If Nothing Visible Happens on Your Block

Clyde has 1,368 residents as of the 2020 census, and downtown is small enough that any change to a single storefront is felt. Watching K-9 Curriculum go up five feet is not just a curiosity. It is the pilot that determines whether the other fifteen buildings actually get raised on the schedule the town has been promising, or whether costs and construction friction push some owners to drop out.

If you own a home nearby, or you have thought about what your neighborhood will look like in five years, the sequence you want to watch is straightforward. K-9 Curriculum first. 74 Mane Salon and the adjacent building shortly after. Sidewalks and parking under the state grant on a parallel track. The floodable park on the buyout parcels once the DEQ money is fully deployed. Those four pieces, taken together, are what Governor Stein's office called Clyde's "post-Helene identity." It is being built in front of you this summer.

If a property decision is on the horizon and you want to talk through how a specific block, home, or lot in Clyde connects to the elevation footprint, the floodable park area, or the sidewalk grant zone, Catherine Proben is happy to walk it with you in person. Schedule a Free Consultation and bring the questions the news articles have not answered yet.