Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

The Price and the Faces of Progress

Andrea M. McDonough’s State Farm Insurance Agency

Story by Sam Calhoun

Editor’s note: In the coming weeks, High Country Press will feature the stories of people being displaced by the Highway 421 widening project.

Andrea M. McDonough can remember getting off the school bus with Pam Stapleton on East King Street every day after elementary school. The girls’ fathers worked near each other—Stapleton’s father owned and operated High Country Cleaners and McDonough’s father owned and operated the State Farm Insurance agency—and McDonough has fond memories of playing on the front stoop of the rock building at 154 East King Street with Stapleton after school.

A lot has changed since then, though. Stapleton now co-owns and operates her father’s cleaners with her brother and McDonough now owns and operates her father’s insurance agency. The buildings that house each business will be demolished as part of the Highway 421 widening project.

“I grew up in this office,” said McDonough, who purchased the business and building from her father Wiley Martin in 1995. “It’s really hard to see it go.”

Martin was the first permanent State Farm Insurance agent in Boone, starting his agency in 1964 out of a small office on King Street across from the Boone Fire Department and in the present-day location of Green Eggs and Jam. In 1978, Martin bought the rock building at 154 East King Street and moved his business. At the time, East King Street was sparsely populated and town residents thought Martin was crazy for moving his business to such an “out-of-town” location.

Martin purchased the rock building from Dr. Wilson, a general practitioner who assisted in the birth of countless High Country babies. Before Dr. Wilson moved in, the rock building was a private residence—and a beautiful one at that. The building is filled with stone arches, chestnut lumber and fireplaces. According to McDonough, it was built in the early 1920s.

“This building has so much character. It has so much character and you can’t find that in Boone, ” said McDonough. “It’s a solid stone building and there is nothing in Boone like it. You can’t replace it.”

More than three years ago, McDonough attended the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s meeting concerning the Highway 321 widening project. At the meeting, McDonough asked a NC DOT official if the department was planning to widen Highway 421 as well. The official told her that NC DOT had no such plans.

“I knew better, though. I didn’t believe it,” said McDonough, who learned of her building’s fate two years ago at the first NC DOT meeting concerning the Highway 421 widening project. “I’ve been grieving for my building for two years.”

McDonough, a licensed insurance agent for 21 years who handles insurance policies for almost 2,000 local households, has mixed feelings about the widening project.

“I’ve seen the traffic in front of my office for quite some time now, so I see a need for [widening the road],” said McDonough. “But Boone has been enlarging beyond itself for quite some time—not a good thing. I don’t think growing for the sake of growth is necessarily a good thing.

“I mean, I love this town. I grew up here, but it’s not that small town anymore,” added McDonough.

McDonough plans to stay in business, but there is one problem—where does she go?

“The challenge is finding a location I can afford that is close to the same location,” said McDonough, who has been searching for a new home for her business for months. “I can find that same location but the price is high.”

According to McDonough, to find a location and building comparable to what she has now is going to cost her more than $1 million—a sum she is not expecting to get from NC DOT once her appraisal is completed.

“I know I’m not going to get compensated for location,” said McDonough, who employs four people at her business—Nancy Glenn, Aprile Beach, Tonya Miles and Crystal Gutierrez.

An appraisal agent from NC DOT appraised McDonough’s building last Thursday, but she has yet to hear the price NC DOT will pay for her rock building. The agent told McDonough that hers is one of the first businesses appraised in the process.

“And once I have that offer, I have 90 days to get out,” said McDonough. “But it puts me in a bind because I can’t look to buy [another building] because I don’t know what [NC DOT] is going to give me. I’m kind of in a wait and see mode.

“It’s going to be very hard, though,” added McDonough, “because we’re still a small business trying to survive.”