It's a Saturday afternoon in the River Arts District. Half the sky is blindingly white, the color of a summer's glare. But on the other side of the bridge that crosses the French Broad River, the sky is a raging storm, a blue so dark it could be black.
“Let’s hope nothing happens,” says Jannette Montenegro as she looks up at the sky from the deck of Cotton Mill Studios. The building houses seven businesses, one of which is the family-run restaurant Guajiro. Two years ago, that same place was destroyed after Hurricane Helene swept through Asheville.
Montenegro and her husband, Richard Patiño, own the building and are partners in the restaurant that their son, Christian Barroso, runs with chef Joel Morales. Since September 27, 2024, this Cuban-American family's goal has been to recover what was lost and revitalize an area that is still heavily affected.
“We’re sitting in a place that was underwater, and that’s pretty impressive,” Montenegro recalls in an interview with Enlace Latino NC At the restaurant, at that moment, people begin to arrive for dinner; salsa music is playing and a mural of Celia Cruz with artificial flowers is about to be finished.
Guajiro It reopened last week in the same building where it started as a food truck, just before Helene's second anniversary. It's one of the few businesses in the area that managed to return to its original location.
Around it, the landscape still shows the hurricane marksThere are businesses that never returned, buildings that no longer exist, the path along the river remains partially closed, and across the street, a memorial commemorates all that was lost.
“From this part of the River District, we are the only business that has returned,” Montenegro explains.
Related: River Arts District: Artists and volunteers team up to clean up area devastated by Helene
The challenge of economic recovery
Helene was the deadliest and most costly storm in North Carolina history, with damages estimated at nearly $60,000 billion. according to the state governmentTwo years later, many small businesses in the western part of the state reopened. But they still don't earn what they used to..
“There is still a lot of stress in the area, a sense of exhaustion, of anxiety,” said Claudia Gutiérrez, program manager of Western Women's Business Center, in an interview with Enlace Latino NC .
The organization is about to release a survey on the state of small businesses in the 22 western counties of the state, and this publication has obtained access to the data. Of the approximately 60 businesses that had received counseling or loans, 68% are fully open and about 28% are operating at reduced capacity.
More than a third lost over $75,000 in revenue after the hurricane, and 92% cited cash flow as their primary current need. “Many businesses have managed to reopen, but that doesn’t mean they’ve recovered,” Gutiérrez said.
Another Mountain BizWorks surveyAn Asheville-based organization that lends money to small businesses points in the same direction. Among its more than 700 clients, three out of four are earning the same or less than before Helene, and inflation and rising costs now weigh more heavily than the hurricane itself among their concerns.
The personal cost of rebuilding
The couple has known Asheville since the 80s, when the city was "very, very American," as Patiño recalls. Today they divide their time between Asheville, Miami, and Puerto Rico, but in the last two years almost all of it has been spent in this building.
Montenegro still recognizes those who were there. On the day of the interview, an Asheville firefighter approached him at the restaurant and asked if he remembered him. “Of course,” he replied. He used to come every day with bottles of water for them to drink.
Those first few months were pure survival. They spent almost two months removing mud from the building; they were there for three months. without water They were without electricity for almost two years and ate what World Central Kitchen and volunteers brought them. Every night they drove 30 to 40 minutes to Alexander to bathe, along with the employees and their families, at a friend's house.
“Those were very primitive things,” Montenegro said. Two years later, every helicopter that passes reminds him of the noise of the military aircraft that flew over the river during those weeks.
According to Montenegro, the decision to rebuild came when the city placed a condemned building notice on the property, which the couple challenged. “That fight gave us the courage to say no, this isn’t condemned, this area is going to come back,” he said.
The building stood empty for nearly two years. To make ends meet, the couple dipped into their retirement savings and cut expenses. Guajiro, on the other hand, continued operating out of a food truck a friend sold them, parked in front of Hi-Wire Brewing in Biltmore Village, which didn't charge them rent during that time. This allowed the restaurant to keep its employees.
“It’s a project that encompasses every aspect of your life,” Montenegro said. The electricians and plumbers who worked on the building every day for two years ended up becoming, in his words, a new family. “But it has been extremely difficult.”
The weight of debt and stress
Not all the tenants of the Cotton Mill returned. A bar that used to fill its tables every weekend couldn't recover: it was already burdened with pandemic-related debts, and with the flood, it lost everything, Montenegro said. Other tenants moved away from Asheville or are now doing other work.
Gutiérrez sees the same pattern throughout the region. During the pandemic, many businesses obtained loans with the help of the Small Business Administration (SBA). When Helene arrived, they were still being paid off and the agency again offered them emergency credit.
“So now, instead of one loan, there are two,” he said. Some lenders also stopped lending while the region remained devastated.
In addition to the debt, there's a strain that isn't reflected in the numbers. According to Gutiérrez, many owners focused on their personal recovery first and only then on their businesses. Some lost their homes. "A person has to recover from that and then say: well, now I'm going to focus on my business," he said.
Tourism, on which a large part of the region's economy depends, has not fully recovered either. In 2023, the year before Helene, visitors spent almost $3,000 billion in Buncombe County, 20% of its gross domestic product. according to Explore Asheville.
In 2024 that figure dropped to 2,650 million. In the first seven months of 2026, hotel occupancy was 62%, nine percentage points lower than in 2019, according to the same agency.
Alejandro Hernández Herrera, originally from Mexico City, has been running King of Kings Painting for 18 years. When the hurricane hit, the house his team was painting was destroyed, and he never got paid for the work. For almost three months, he had to find work elsewhere to pay the rent.
A loan from the Carolina Small Business Development Fund allowed him to replace the tools he lost. But companies from other states arrived in the region with lower prices, and the builders he works with halted projects until they sold the houses they already had.
“The money disappears like water,” Hernández told Enlace Latino NC “It has been very difficult for me, but we are putting all our effort into continuing.”
The challenges of Latino businesses
Gutiérrez says that Latino businesses sometimes have more difficulty accessing available resources. Not because they don't exist, he clarifies, but because of how they are viewed within the community.
“Sometimes, in the Latino community, we have this mindset of 'no, I'm fine, nothing terrible happened to me, my business is still here,'” she said. But, according to her, almost all businesses suffered financially.
Furthermore, he adds, there is a lot of uncertainty in the Latino community today, and that also affects those businesses, beyond what the hurricane left behind.
In Henderson County, where most of the region's Latino businesses are concentrated, Melisa S. Escobar sees it every day. She runs True Ridge, an organization that serves the Latino communities of Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties.
“Two tornadoes came together,” Escobar told Enlace Latino NC First came the recovery from the hurricane, and then the rise in prices, gasoline, and tariffs.
The business owners she knows tell her that sales are nowhere near what they were two years ago. “People aren’t spending the same amount,” she explained. Added to that is the immigration situation. “People are afraid to run promotions and be too visible to the public.”
The uneven recovery of the River Arts District
Meanwhile, in one of Asheville's most touristic districts, the recovery looks different depending on where you're looking. Montenegro describes it as the letter K. In his building, galleries are still selling paintings priced between $5,000 and $20,000.
“Those who are doing well, do well, and those who aren’t, get left behind,” he said. “Workers are suffering a lot.”
This imbalance is also felt in hiring. According to Montenegro, many people left the area after the hurricane because everything is so expensive that a regular job isn't enough to live on, and others left due to immigration problems.
Guajiro has almost ten employees. “We need more,” Patiño said.
And although they seem fully recovered today, they know the road ahead will be long. “We, as owners of the building, aren’t going to recoup our investment, maybe not in our lifetime,” Montenegro said. “But it’s something we’re leaving for our son.”
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