“Mammoth Bridge” in Enka? Old plans for Brookwood golf course?

Today’s pile of burning questions, my smart answers, and the real deal:

Question: My apologies if you’ve answered this question before, as I’m certainly not the only person concerned about this. This is about the mammoth bridge over the railroad tracks near the old Enka factory on the Smokey Park Highway. Someone had big plans that obviously didn’t work out. could they still? Who owns this bridge? And what is it for?

My answer: “Mammoth Bridge” would be a catchy name for it, and we locals could tell tourists that this is how you get to see the woolly remains of mammoths in the Enka Tar Pits.

Real answer: This “bridge to nowhere,” as some people call it, has quite a history behind it.

I wrote about it in 2016 when it was still under construction. At the time, developer Martin Lewis, a member of Fletcher Partners, the group developing the site, said the five-lane, $3.5 million bridge would lead to a new retail complex called The Enka Center, as well as a sports complex.

At one point, plans called for major retail on the site, even a possible Walmart, and rumors of a Costco swirled. While the baseball fields at Bob Lewis Ballpark came into their own, none of the retail outlets did.

Recently, the Asheville City Council approved what appears to be an Amazon distribution center on the site — a 130,000-square-foot distribution center operated by Samet Corp. was built, which has built other Amazon distribution centers, including the one in Mills River.