Staff in the small Madison County town of Hot Springs have moved back into their historic Town Hall building, more than two years after Hurricane Helene tore through the community and left the building unusable. The town announced the milestone this week alongside an open house and ribbon cutting held Thursday, Nov. 12.
As reported by The Asheville Citizen Times, the move marks the end of a long road back for a building that sat damaged and empty since the storm. The Town of Hot Springs describes the transformation in blunt terms on its website: “Hurricane Helene changed Hot Springs, and our Town Hall has been rebuilt into a new space.” The town had invited residents to “celebrate with us at an open house and ribbon cutting on Thursday, November 12, 2026,” formally marking the reopening.
Helene made landfall and devastated Hot Springs on Sept. 27, 2024, triggering severe flooding from the French Broad River and Spring Creek that swamped the downtown area, according to the same Citizen Times reporting. The Town Hall building was among the casualties, and for more than two years the structure stood as a visible reminder of how much work remained.
A Slow Climb From Boarded-Up Building to Repair Bids
The building's path to reopening wasn't quick. As late as January 2026, the Citizen Times' reporting partner WUNC found Town Hall still boarded up and awaiting repairs, even as other parts of town pushed forward with recovery. TJ Phillips, board president of Rebuild Hot Springs, told WUNC that most local businesses had already reopened by that point, and that the nonprofit had distributed more than $700,000 in relief to storm-damaged businesses.
Even earlier, a September 2025 report from ABC11 described a new town hall as still sitting on the community's long recovery to-do list, underscoring how far behind the municipal building lagged compared to other rebuilding efforts around Hot Springs.
The turning point came in May 2025, when Hot Springs' Town Board approved a repair bid from Rane Adamson to fix the Town Hall building. Mayor Abby Norton and the board voted to approve Adamson's bid, with an estimate of roughly $235,000 for the work, the Citizen Times reported at the time. The planned repairs focused specifically on flooring, covering both the main floor and the auxiliary room upstairs.
A Funding Gap FEMA Didn't Cover
Not all of the repair costs were expected to be reimbursed. Norton said the FEMA assessment did not include reimbursement for an additional estimated $20,000 needed to replace the Town Hall's main-floor joists, leaving the town to account for that gap on its own, according to the Citizen Times' May 2025 report.
Town Hall's rebuild was just one piece of a much larger recovery effort. By February 2026, Hot Springs was working through 20 separate FEMA projects aimed at rebuilding infrastructure, including its water and sewer systems, the Citizen Times reported. The town had by then received more than $11 million in state grants for recovery. That same February report noted the Hot Springs Library was on track to reopen by mid-April, with furnishings scheduled to arrive at the end of March — another sign of the town's piecemeal, project-by-project climb back from the storm.
Now, with staff back inside a building the town says has been rebuilt into a new space, Hot Springs marks one of the more visible milestones in a recovery that has stretched well past two years.
