Save Lured Market — Sign the Petition to Reinstate the Lease
Ask the Town of Lake Lure and Lured Market to sit down, work it out, and let the people decide in the open
Photo: Ferd Prod (CC BY-SA 4.0)
On August 21, 2026, the Town of Lake Lure issued a notice terminating Second Mountain, LLC's lease at 2654 Memorial Highway — the home of Lured Market & Grill, Lake Lure's best-known business — and demanded the building be vacated by the next day. Paul and Cara Brock have said they won't leave.
We think that's the wrong call, and we think it was made the wrong way.
Who Paul and Cara are
Paul and Cara Brock opened the original Lured Market in June 2019, running a small local market — beer, wine, snacks, souvenirs — out of an old gas station in Lake Lure. In 2024 they bid on and won a Town lease across the street, hoping to grow into a coffee shop with lakefront access and boat tours. The lease was signed August 29, 2024. Twenty-nine days later, Hurricane Helene hit and washed away their planned October grand opening along with much of the rest of this community.
They rebuilt anyway. Today Lured Market & Grill employs 24 people and carries product from roughly 50 local vendors — by the numbers in the Town's own record, it is the best-known business in Lake Lure.
On August 14, 2026, Paul and Cara sat through a seven-hour mediation trying to work this out. The Town sent its manager and two attorneys. No mayor, no commissioner — nobody who answers to Lake Lure voters — showed up on the other side of the table.
What we're asking for
1. Reinstate the lease
Let Second Mountain, LLC keep operating Lured Market & Grill under the existing lease terms. Drop the eviction. No back rent is even alleged to be owed — the Town's own filing cites lateness, not nonpayment.
2. Put it to a public vote
No Council meeting between August 12 and August 21 addressed this lease in open session. A decision this size — shutting down the town's best-known business — deserves an on-the-record vote by the five elected officials who answer to Lake Lure voters, not a closed-session outcome or a manager's call alone.
3. Sit down and work it out
Mediation reached an impasse after seven hours with no elected official in the room. Both sides — the Town and Lured Market — owe this community a good-faith conversation aimed at a resolution that lets the Market keep operating and lets the Town resolve its legitimate concerns about the boathouse and the lease terms. That's a better outcome for Lake Lure than a courtroom fight, and it's the outcome we're asking both parties to commit to reaching.
Read the full documentary record behind this — the lease clause, the emails, the mediation, and what the court file actually shows — in our investigation: Inside the Fight Over Lake Lure's Best-Known Business →
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A note on where we stand
Lake Lure Insider is not a neutral bystander on this page — we're asking you to sign a petition, and we think the Town should reinstate this lease. Our reporting on the underlying facts, linked above, aims to be accurate regardless of what it shows, including the places where Lured's own public statements don't hold up. Read it and decide for yourself.
Last updated: 2026-08-23