ASHEBORO – At the end of the Asheboro City Council’s regular business meeting last week, long-time city manager John Ogburn announced his retirement.
“My decisions and focus have always been on what’s best for the City of Asheboro, and frankly, the search for a new city manager will be more straightforward and easier to achieve than a search for a deputy city manager that could subsequently become the city manager,” Ogburn said. “Given the challenges of recruitment and desiring that the community have the best it possibly can, I have decided that my last active day as your city manager will be Friday, March 14, 2025.”
Ogburn is retiring after 35 years of local government service and a 24-year run as Asheboro city manager.
“This is a significant milestone in my city management profession,” Ogburn said of his 35 years of public service. “I have served all these years in Randolph County and almost 25 of these in our hometown and of this, I am very proud. However, there’s another day for reminiscing, as March 2025 will be here very soon, so I’ll spend these remaining months finishing projects, preparing the staff for change and laying the groundwork for the new manager to step right in. It will be a very busy period, but it will also be bittersweet as I prepare for the next phase of my life.”
Mayor David Smith said: “I’ve said this many times, Asheboro has been extremely fortunate to be the home of the best city manager in all of North Carolina. On behalf of the citizens, I want to thank John for his leadership and friendship.”
In terms of meeting business, the board was informed that Downtown Asheboro Incorporated had received a $25,000 Duke Energy Hometown Revitalization Grant, which will be subgranted to various downtown businesses.
“We were one of the selected communities in Duke’s service region,” DAI executive director Addie Corder said. “I look forward to seeing how downtown businesses and stakeholders leverage those grants for additional opportunities downtown.”
Per Duke Energy, the grants are aimed at “helping small businesses across North Carolina – from restaurants to retailers – continue their ongoing recovery from economic challenges initially triggered by the pandemic,” and this is the fourth year of the program.
The council approved appropriations for economic development at three different agencies: $55,000 for Randolph County NC Economic Development Corporation, $75,000 for Asheboro/Randolph Chamber of Commerce and $73,511 for Downtown Asheboro Incorporated.
According to finance director Deborah Reaves, the appropriations had already been approved in the general operating budget they hadn’t been allocated yet.
The board also held two legislative hearings, with the first being a rezoning application for 13 acres of property located at 909, 911 and 915 Meadowbrook Road from R10 to O&I.
“The property is presently used for a church,” said Trevor Nuttall, director of community development. “The zoning will allow the church to expand in the future, have zoning that other churches already have and allow for modern signage.”
The second hearing was also for a rezoning application for 94.27 acres of property located on the west side of Zoo Parkway between 2358 and 2476 Zoo Pkwy and the south side of Newbern Avenue between 294 and 360 Newbern Ave. to an amended R7.5 conditional zoning for the purpose of constructing a 350-unit residential planned development.
“You actually put this property into the R7.5 conditional zoning back in January, but the reason this is back before you is because the applicant has made changes that are determined by the code to be significant enough that we at the staff level cannot approve them without going back through the process,” Nuttall said.
Nuttall said the major changes involved allowing the construction of townhomes beyond phase one, changing the ratio of detached single-family to townhomes from 286:64 to 252:98 and utilizing Zoo Parkway as a construction entrance and not for future residential access.
Following the legislative hearings, the board approved both requests.
The Asheboro City Council will next meet Sept. 5.
