the fitzgerald condominiums - asheville, north carolina

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Aggie and Mary McGeary settled into rocking chairs in front of Biltmore Village Co. and smiled as they talked about their afternoon to come — shopping and lunching on a beautiful day in Biltmore Village.

“We’ve got the best seats in town,” Aggie McGeary said. A resident of North Asheville, she played host to the small family reunion that she, Mary McGeary, sister-in-law Sandy McIntosh and their husbands were having in town.

While the men were playing golf at the Grove Park Inn, the ladies chose to spend their afternoon along the shaded boulevards and brick sidewalks of Biltmore Village.

“It’s just pleasant to come down here,” Aggie McGeary said.

One of Asheville’s “destination” communities, Biltmore Village has the kinds of pebbledash and red-roof shops and restaurants that have drawn people like the McGearys for decades. Built for artisans and professionals who worked for George Vanderbilt, Biltmore Village continues to be a place where families meet up.

Vanderbilt built the village out of the crossroads community of Best. The village included a train depot, a spacious plaza and several charming English-style cottages. It eventually grew to include a school, hospital, post office and one of the country’s first neighborhood shopping centers.

The cottages, which are the shops and restaurants now, were operated much the way condominiums are now — residents rented their homes and a village staff took care of the grass and plantings around the houses. Monthly rent for a four-room house was $8. For an eight-room house, rent was as much as $20.

Vanderbilt died unexpectedly in 1914. The Swannanoa River flooded in 1916, drowning several people and damaging the village. Several years later, Vanderbilt’s wife, Edith, sold most of the village. It was included in the Asheville city limits in 1940 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Despite the possibility of flooding, the village continues to attract merchants and visitors. The Grand Bohemian Hotel, built to resemble a 19th-century European hunting lodge, opened last year with 104 guest rooms and suites. In 2008, a large retail development on the north side of Brook Street opened, with tenants that include Talbots, Chico’s, Williams-Sonoma and Coldwater Canyon.

The new shops join established ones like Jos. A. Banks Clothiers, New Morning Gallery, The Compleat Naturalist and The Gardener’s Cottage, as well as restaurants such as Rezaz Restaurant and Enoteca and Chelsea’s and The Village Tea Room.

All are trying to attract families like Bob Zielesch’s. Standing in the shade of oak trees outside Biltmore Village Co., he and son David Zielesch waited for Bob’s wife and David’s mother, Sara, who was shopping with the other ladies of the family. They, too, met in Asheville for a reunion.

Bob Zielesch’s niece, who arranged the meet-up, lives here. Twenty-one family members from Michigan, California and elsewhere had flown and driven in. Bob and Sara Zielesch had driven from home in Brighton, Mich.

“The scenery is so nice here,” Bob said as Sara approached, having emerged from Bellagio Art to Wear. She mentioned all the people she’d bought gifts for. She rattled off more than half a dozen names. “Some light shopping,” her husband teased her.