Mountain Real Estate News

 Its fall festival time again.  Listed below are some of our favorites.  Also, ASU Homecoming is October 4th.

Sept.   27-28            Grayson Highlands Fall Festival  Mt. Rogers, Va.

Oct.      4                 Brushy Mtn. Apple Festival       North Wilkesboro

Oct.      11               Oktoberfest                          Sugar Mountain

Oct.      18               Valle Country Fair                   Valle Crucis

Oct.     18-19            Wolly Worm Festival                Banner Elk

The town of Boone purchased the Boone Post office building this week.  The USPS had declared the building surplus. The historic stone building located on King St. was built in 1938. The town paid $1.25 million.  The USPS will rent  625 sq. st. of the 7400 sq. st. building for 20 years.

Road Updates-  Payne Branch Rd new bridge will be complete in October and will reopen.

Hwy 321 south of Blowing Rock is now scheduled to open in July 2009. 

The King St. widening in Boone will start soon and is scheduled to be complete by fall of 2010.

Starting October 1 a new law goes into effect in NC.  The new law requires real estate brokers to provide to buyers the amount of compensation the buyer stands to make on a transaction.  This law came about after it was disclosed that some brokers were being paid bonuses by the sellers without knowledge of the buyers, whom the broker represented.

High Country Press

Story by Anna Oakes

The Blowing Rock Town Council on Tuesday tabled a request for a conditionial use permit for Main Street Village, a proposed 7.28 acre, $72 million development that would connect downtown Blowing Rock to the Tanger Shoppes on the Parkway.

After spending four hours on the issue, council members said they want to further discuss concerns with the project at either the next council meeting or a special session.  Increased traffic, stormwater detention, parking and density were among the council members' concerns.

Council member Phillip Pickett recused himself from the discussion because he and his family own two hotel properties- Boxwood Lodge and Blowing Rock Inn- across the street from the project.

Chetola Severn LLC wants to build a development that includes a 72-room hotel, two restaurants, 36 condominiums, 21,000 square feet of retail space and 16,000 square feet of office space.  The project is planned for tract along Main Street, with the entrances on Main and Hill streets.

"The project is one of the largest and most complex of any in Blowing Rock's history", wrote Kevin Rothrock, town planning director, in a report to the council.

Chetola Severn LLC includes partners Douglas Wilkins, Patrick McPharr, Dan Moore, Lou Dessaint and Kent Tarbutton. Wilkins and Dessaint are residents of Blowing Rock and Tarbutton is owner of Chetola Resort.

At issue before the council members is whether to grant three waivers of the town's Land Use Ordinance standards.

The first waiver is needed for the project to satisfy the 70 percent limitation for the impervious surfaces- any space developed with buildings or pavement.  As designed, the 4.52 acre commercial portion of the project consists of more thatn 70 percent impervious surfaces.  The developers want two adjacent, previous undeveloped tracts- one belonging to Chetola Resort and the other deeded to the town by Chetola for building a sidewalk- to be calculated in the percentage.

Second, the developers want to use Chetola Lake- and offsite- as the stormwater detention basin for the runoff from Main Street Village.  Since 1991, the town has required all stormwater detention to be onsite.  As proposed in the plan, catch basin inserts would filter the oil, grease, and hydrocarbons from the stormwater runoff throughout the project site and the filtered water would be diverted to the lake.

Tom Griffin, a Charlotte attorney hired by the developers who specializes in stormwater management, said that water flow into Chetola Lake has only increased .09 percent in 100 years.

"There will be no impact on the lake" Griffin said.

Third, the location of the entrance on Main Street is only 200 feet from the entrance to Chetola Resort- less thatn the towns required seperation of at least 400 feet.  The developers say this location is the safest entrance - rather than placing it closer to a curve.

Aside from the waivers the developers requested, council members took issue with the months - January and April - in which the traffic studies were conducted.  "We're concerned with peak days in peak seasons", said council member Keith Tester.  Council member Barbara Ball said she worries that drivers will cut through neighborhoods off Hill Street to avoid traffic on Main.

Water availability is also an issue.  Since 2000, the state has prohibited the town of Blowing Rock from extending public water lines for the new service because of decreasing water supply, Rothrock said.  New structures located near existing water lines can receive service, so the hotel, restaurants, retail stores, offices and two of the residential buildings are eligible for public water.  Seven residential buildings are not.

Tarbutton said residential buildings will be built in a later phase of the project.  The partners expect that Blowing Rock will be able to connect to the Boone and ASU water systems within a few years.

"I think once the connection happens, the state will lift the moratorium" he said.

Another issue is parking.  The project's allocation of 370 parking spaces falls 28 spaces short of what the town planners say it will need, but the developers say they will resolve that by increasing the number of spaces or paying into the town's parking fund.

Some elements of the building designs - including flat roofs, pergolas and large glass windows on the hotel - are inconsistent with the town's ordinance, downtown Blowing Rock architecture and the town's mountain resort character, Rothrock's report said.

Tony Di Santi, and attorney with the project, said the developers would comply with the town's requirements, but he cautioned the town againest exerting so much control over appearance that everything starts to look "boring".

Karyn Kennedy Herterich, owner of the SouthMarket retail on the Main Street, agreed.

"Why can't we embrace mountain architecture without everything being rock and brick and stone and five colors?" she said.

Richard Goosman, owner of the Meadowbrook Inn, said he hopes the new hotel will help attract more corporate groups to increase local hotel business on weekdays.  Ed Merritt, a resident of North Main Street, expressed concerns about traffic and the density of the project and said he worries about aesthetics.

The council is being asked to approve an averall "concept plan" for the project, including the locations and intended uses for all structures, tree preservation, parking, density and requested waivers.  If the council approves the concept plan, the developers will present each building design separately for approval by the planning board and council. 

The final numbers for Watauga County building permits are now available. These numbers do not include building within the city limits of Boone, Blowing Rock, Seven Devls and Beech Mountain.

For 2007, 305 new homes were pemitted with a value of $104 million.  That is an average of $305,000 per home, an increase from $186,000 in 2003.

The number of permits declined from 2006, so the trend was for fewer but larger homes last year.

Multi family building in the county dropped from 46 new units in 2006 to just 20 in 2007 with a value of $5.8 million.

The total value of all permits for residential, multi family and commercial, new and renovation work, was $141 million.  This is an increase from $135 million in 2006 and $119 million in 2005. 

While the growth has slowed in the county, it is doing well compared to most other markets in North Carolina, which is better off than most of the country.

Work is continuing on the Ginn Corporation Laurelmor project. Sales have been on going for 15 months.  To date nearly 200 lots valued at $120 million have been closed on.  The resorts preset phase has 445 lots platted.

Seven model homes are under constrcution with one under contract.  Completion dates for the models start in June.  The infrastructure for the present phase will be completed by the fall of 2009

Construction of the clubhouse facilities will start soon.  They have built over 20 miles of roads inside the project and paving will start this year.

The value of building permits in the town of Blowing Rock for the 2007 year was $20,468,616.   This was a decrease of nearly 20% from 2006 when the value was $24, 674,000.  This number includes new construction and renavations for residntial, commercial and Multi Family building.

The number of permits increased to 403 from 336 the year before.  233 of these permits were for single famly renovations, with a value of $7.3 million.  There were 16 new home permits which was down from 21 permits in 2006.  The average permit value was $421,244 for the new homes which also was a decrease from the average cost of $468,667 in 2006.

The Edgewood Cottage was the only new commercial permit of any size for the year. There were 105 permits for renovations for commercial properties, the most notable being the new facilty for United Communtiy Bank.

There were no new multi family permits but 46 renovation permits valued at $919,494 were issued.

The outlook for 2008 is an increase in commercial work, both new and renovation, while residential should be about steady.

Karen and I are happy to announce that we have joined Vincent Properties in Blowing Rock, NC.  We are located on Main Street.  We also have an office at our Vacation Rental business, Blowing Rock Country Cabins.  It is located 4 miles south of town on Hwy. 221.