WV REAL ESTATE: Developers Moving in on New River Gorge
By Milan SimonichPittsburgh Post-Gazette
Fayetteville, WV (SHNS) -- The state slogan of "Wild and Wonderful" could have sprung straight from New River Gorge without any help from a marketing company.
It's a place of raging water, deep canyons and abandoned coal towns now covered in timber, vegetation and rocky trails. These natural wonders draw 1.15 million tourists a year in a state with just 1.8 million residents, so locals aren't exaggerating when they call New River Gorge a place with magnetic appeal.
High-end housing developers love the gorge, too. Their emergence means southern West Virginia is not as peaceful as it used to be.
Despite opposition from the National Park Service, Atlanta-based Land Resource Companies has received local zoning approval to develop lots for 450 homes atop the New River Gorge. If sales go well, the developer could add another 1,600 housing lots across its 4,300 acres.
A second landowner, Gary Driggs of Phoenix, hopes to develop up to 550 lots in another section of the gorge. Driggs already has zoning approval from the town of Fayetteville and is busy creating roads and lots for the first 90 houses. Both developers hope home construction will start this year.
Driggs said he expects houses in his 1,400-acre site to cost between $400,000 and $800,000. Tom Wagner of Land Resource Companies said homes will start at $180,000 in his development. He will not speculate about the most expensive end of the spectrum. A more important number, Wagner says, is the $1.1 billion that a West Virginia University economist calculated the project will mean to the region's economy. Wagner says the development will create 1,000 jobs over 10 years.
Both developers promise fine homes that will fit into the countryside and fatten the tax base of slumbering Fayette County, where the population has been stagnant at 47,000 for 15 years.
Cal Hite, superintendent of the New River Gorge National River, says these subdivisions for wealthy people also carry a danger. He fears that houses built near the gorge rim could mar the natural beauty that attracts visitors in the first place.
"We would not want future generations to perceive New River Gorge National River as some substandard unit of the National Park system," he said in outlining concerns to county planners and commissioners.
The county commissioners, in a 2-1 vote, changed the zoning from a soil conservation district to residential area for a vast tract controlled by Land Resource Companies. That opened the way for the development.
Ken Stephens, a park service biologist, has another worry about the Land Resource Companies' project. He says the loss of foraging habitat because of development could harm the Indiana bat and the Virginia big-eared bat, two endangered species.
Longtime residents are more welcoming of the newcomers.
Dave Arnold, who for 29 years has run a rafting company on the New River, says he sees both developers as sincere people with a vision for improving the economy without harming the park.
"I want growth," he said. "I think these projects are good for the community and for business, but the difficult part for anybody is we're trying to look 20 years into the future. Nobody knows how it will turn out."
Still, he pointed to freight and passenger trains that rumble along the river and to his own creation of eight cabins to help accommodate more rafters. A storm of human activity already occurs in the gorge each day, Arnold said, but it does not seem to bother visitors.
Arnold and various partners sold property to Driggs, who then embarked on his housing development.
Driggs said residents and the park service bantered years ago about creating a golf course, retail shops and an amphitheater along the river -- projects that would have been much more intrusive than his subdivision.
"I think what I'm doing will have a minimal impact and, in fact, a positive impact," he said. "How often do you see people with $500,000 homes who don't take good care of their neighborhood? These people will be the park's best friends."
Driggs has a checkered past. After 17 years as CEO of an Arizona savings and loan company, his business collapsed in the late 1980s.
In the scandal that followed, Driggs pleaded guilty to two felonies for making false statements to government regulators. He paid about $600,000 and served five years of probation to settle the criminal case against him. He and his four grown children operate eight hotels in Western states, including one 70 miles from the Grand Canyon. Driggs' wife, Kay, is a native of West Virginia.
Driggs says his venture on the gorge is a family business. In contrast, Land Resource Companies is a bigger operation, now developing a dozen subdivisions in Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Wagner says the New River Gorge project will be robust economically but unobtrusive to the eye.
His company has agreed to limit the height of its homes to 35 feet. He says the average size of trees that will provide cover is 83 feet. Tourists will be hard-pressed to see any homes, much less be offended by them, according to Wagner.
He says the development should clean up eyesores and environmental problems, not cause them. In buying property, Land Resource Companies acquired the abandoned county landfill whose waste seeps into the New River. The company will build a sewer system that it says should curtail that problem.
Tim Richardson, the county's zoning officer, said Land Resource Companies should be a better corporate neighbor than the coalfields that once dominated the riverfront.
Stephens, the park biologist, says mines now are banned from the land, so a comparison between an old industry and a housing development makes no sense. The real issue, he said, is whether the breathtaking views will be a lot more ordinary once 80 or 90 houses become part of the landscape along the gorge.
"We all covet the same ground," he said. "We would like more room for a buffer."
E-mail Milan Simonich at msimonich@post-gazette.com.)
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