BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. (828newsNOW) — A conflict has been brewing between the town of Black Mountain and local business Black Mountain Brewing since the town building inspector shut down part of the brew pub over Labor Day weekend.
Read our summary of the controversy here.
John Richardson, an owner of BMB, spoke with 828newsNOW about the deck closure and finding a potential path forward between Black Mountain and his business.
8 years without issue
According to Richardson, the problems with town management this September took him by surprise, considering the brewery had stood for eight years without issue.
“It has not been fun. This is not what we thought eight years ago, when we envisioned creating a place for the community to come together and get to know each other over a beer,” Richardson said. “‘We’d worked hand in hand with the planning and zoning department of the town over the last eight years to build this place. Like, even from our due diligence, you don’t buy a commercial building and do this unless you have the right to do it.”
Richardson said that BMB worked closely with the former head of Planning and Development Services, Black Mountain Town Manager Josh Harrold, and Assistant Town Manager Jessica Trotman to bring their business to life.
“Josh Harrold was head of planning and zoning throughout the due diligence. He left three weeks before we actually closed on the property, and then after that, Jessica Trotman, who’s now the assistant town manager, has been head of planning and zoning ever since then,” Richardson said. “So, she’s approved every inspection. She approved all the engineered drawings. Well, I say she. Her department. But, it was under her watch that we were able to do all this, and it’s just kind of crazy that it has come to this.”
Past versus paperwork
In a press release issued by the town after community backlash on Facebook, officials acknowledged that “questions have circulated in the community regarding the permitting history of the covered deck at Black Mountain Brewing.” The press release featured a detailed timeline of permits and paperwork from August 2017 to November 2025.
However, the town said that “unpermitted work was taking place on the second floor of the original building in 2025,” which Richardson disputes.
According to the brewery owner, his attorney received an email in August 2025 that BMB was uninspected and out of compliance with town policy.
“I got this message saying that we were out of compliance, and the inspections hadn’t been done and it was just out of nowhere,” Richardson said. “It’s hard to know what to do with that when I have documentation that we have been in full compliance since 2021 and we’ve had inspections every year since then.”
A major sticking point in the town’s cited violations was the need for more bathrooms to match the occupancy limit of the building. Richardson said that damage from Tropical Storm Helene has caused limited access to one of the BMB bathrooms, resulting in an imbalance of people and bathrooms according to NC State Building Plumbing Code 403.2.
However, BMB has taken immediate steps to remedy that problem.
“They’ve shut me down to 25 supposedly, but when we found out that that was one of the issues, we immediately brought in a porta-potty to get the second bathroom up. So, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Richardson said. “But, they’re still not allowing people up on the second deck, and that’s what has killed our fall. People love to be up on that back deck looking out. We’ve had two structural engineers say, structurally, it is sound. It is not an issue. But yet, they’ve still mandated that it be shut.”
Negotiating a path forward
One thing Richardson and the town can agree on is that the two parties met to discuss a solution on Nov. 5, 2025. The town proposed 19 remedies to allow the upper deck of BMB to reopen, all of which are listed in the press release.
The fixes included removing the SMOKE BLK MTN food truck from the premises, replacing doors and windows and, ultimately, enclosing the open air space.”It’s unrealistic that we enclose the back deck and make it an enclosed building. That’s not the vision that we shared in 2018 and were approved for up until this point,” Richardson said. “How they think that we can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars that we don’t have to do something that they want us to do, when we were given their blessing to build this, it’s just, it’s ludicrous. It’s really, really hard to understand.”
With negotiations with the town at a standstill, Richardson said that the BMB team planned to bring in the North Carolina attorney general for an independent investigation.
“We feel as though the town has created this problem and the town needs to be a part of the solution. They don’t need to come in as a bully and mandate what we have to do, or else they shut us down,” Richardson said. “This is, especially this time of year, extremely painful to our employees that are no longer able to work full time, and, you know, there’s six kids of my employees now whose parents don’t have jobs during the holidays.”
Right now, we have a town council and a town administration that is more in love with Circle K and Bojangles than they are with places like Black Mountain Brewing or Open Oven.
While the closure and ensuing conflict have caused a rift between BMB and the town of Black Mountain, Richardson still thinks the relationship is reparable. The brewery owner is a proud resident of Black Mountain.
“I’m gonna live here the rest of my life. I’ve got a 4-year-old. I raised my other daughter here. We live right downtown. We’re gonna continue to live here, and we have to learn to work together, but we have to have leaders that are willing to engage and be a part of the solution,” Richardson said. “Not point fingers and continue to tear down businesses and try and put people out of business, which is what’s going on right now.
“What makes Black Mountain different than Swannanoa or Old Fort is the really special, cool downtown that we have, and right now, we have a town council and a town administration that is more in love with Circle K and Bojangles than they are with places like Black Mountain Brewing or Open Oven that have helped make Black Mountain so cool.”
Richardson thanked the community for its support, in-person and online. For more information about Black Mountain Brewing, visit www.blkmtnbrewing.com or www.facebook.com/blkmtnbrewing.
