Huge sinkhole opened up in Asheville, North Carolina

© Katie Bailey

A large sinkhole opened up Wednesday in the parking lot at the Buncombe County Planning and Development building on S. Charlotte Street.

A sinkhole the size of a pickup truck opened up overnight Wednesday on a county-owned parking lot behind the former TK Tripps restaurant at College and South Charlotte streets.

Heavy rains Tuesday apparently opened up the crater, according to local developer Rusty Pulliam, who with a partner is building a retail/office complex on the site.

Workers about two months ago discovered a drainage pipe installed in 1922 on their property and the county lot, and they are working with the city to relocate it so it will drain to South Charlotte Street, Pulliam said.

"Some sections of it are 40 feet deep, and some of it had collapsed," he said.

The city had agreed to pay for half the cost of relocating the pipe, which appears to carry a stream, but the county has not taken any action, Pulliam said.

"The sinkhole is on county land," he said. "The county was warned about this, and we asked them to participate in getting it off their property."

The sinkhole appeared to be about 15 feet deep.

Surveyors apparently found a manhole on the property, and that led to the discovery of the collapsed pipe, according to Cathy Ball, executive director of planning and multimodal transportation for the city.

When they found the pipe, they approached the city about rerouting it. That's when officials discovered the city had an easement for the section of pipe running through the old TK Tripps' property.

"We did some research and we found out for the section that was on the Tripps' property, we had an easement for it from the 1920s, but it never had gotten recorded on any of our books that we maintained," Ball said.

Buncombe County Assistant Manager Jon Creighton said the exact location of the pipe failure was difficult to determine from a visual inspection.

"Nobody really knew where the failure was, and whether it was on our side or their side," Creighton said. "Nobody was dragging their feet on this. They thought (the failure) was on the property line. It's in a parking lot, so obviously we couldn't go out and be digging in a parking lot."

The city agreed to pay half the $490,000 estimated cost of replacing the pipe.

Creighton said his understanding is that the county will not share in the costs of moving the line with the city or developers, as the county portion of the work would involve a relatively inexpensive grouting of the new pipe. That involves pouring a liquid fill into the pipe that hardens and helps it stay in place.

The city and developers will split the cost of the work, Creighton said. The city's agreement with the county is for the city to do the pipe work in exchange for an easement on the county's property, Creighton said.

"They're going to move the storm water line out to Charlotte Street, then they're going to come back across our property to tie back in to a concrete culvert that's down behind the satellite jail," Creighton said.

The sinkhole is in an unused county parking lot that the county had agreed to let the developers use for materials storage, Creighton said. It is fenced off and does not pose a danger to workers or the public, and water has continued to flow and not back up.

Ball said if the developer had not been planning this project, replacing the pipe would not have been a priority project.

"We said we would not prioritize the relocation of this pipe right now if we look at all the other projects that we have going on, but because there could be an opportunity for a public-private partnership and it could save us money, we would be willing to do that," Ball said.

Ball said the pipe carries a section of Town Branch, which runs behind the city's public works building on Charlotte Street.

"We don't know if that pipe has been replaced since the 1920s," she said.

Ball described is as a "very large pipe and it carries a substantial amount of water."

"There is a manhole a little bit further down on the county's property that has newer pipe," Ball said. "The plan was to reroute that older section and tie it into that manhole where we knew there was a good pipe on further down."

Pulliam and his business partner, John Spake, plan to build a four-story office building called City Centre on the site. They've sold an adjoining piece of property to a Winston-Salem company that will build a six-story Hilton Garden Inn on the 2.4-acre site.

BB&T will move its retail bank location and regional offices to the new City Centre building when it's completed in March 2016. Roberts & Stevens law firm and the Clark Nexsen Architecture firm also will move there around the same time.

Pulliam said the new building will be 84,000 square feet, with a three-level, 320-space parking deck behind it that will serve the hotel and the office building.

The law firm will take the entire fourth floor of the office building, while BB&T will occupy the first two floors, including a 5,000-square-foot bank on the first floor.