The Coming Storm of Development

My View by Jim Yacavone

There’s a storm com­ing to Fannin County. It will be over progress and development. It will cross the boundary between newcomers and old-timers and divide the county into two camps, and it has the potential to get mean, vicious and ugly.  

The reason I know this is because I experi­enced the same thing while living on the west coast of Florida for over three decades.

Forty years ago most small beach towns on Florida’s west coast consisted of mom and pop tourist hotels and modest residen­tial neigh­bor­hoods­. As tourism grew and more people moved to the Gulf Coast, the demand for land near the beaches increased and property values rose.

Developers saw there was money to be made in building multi-story hotels and condos and expensive beach homes. Many property owners cashed out and sold their property to developers who then de­vel­oped the land in the most profitable manner possible. Never mind that what they were building destroyed the character of the beach communities.

Conflict soon grew between those who want­ed to retain the old look and flavor of the beaches and those who favored development.

The pro-growth fac­tion had a lot of argu­ments going for it. Most of them came down to money. Development would bring more tourists and residents, more jobs and more busi­ness oppor­tunities. The sad thing is, depending on your per­spec­­tive, that all these arguments were irrefutable.

Which camp you were in did not depend on whether you were a new­comer or an old-timer. Many newcomers wanted to preserve the old ways, and many old-timers fa­vor­ed development.

Inevitably, great pres­sure was brought to bear on local govern­ments to change zoning and building codes to facilitate develop­ment. When the backlash against development arose, they were pressur­ed to limit growth. This caused some of the ugli­est politics I ever witness­ed. There was mud-slinging, name-calling, lit­i­ga­tion and all the other nastiness that can occur when people feel deeply about the future of their community.

Eventually, the pro-devel­opment faction won. The beaches are now lined with high-rise condos and hotels, and traffic is unbear­able. The beach is still lovely if you can find a parking spot. Paradise was lost.

The truth is that de­velopment almost al­ways wins. Money talks. The allure of profit, new jobs and new business is ir­re­sistible.

What does this have to do with Fannin Coun­ty? Well, Fannin County has the same tourist and retiree economy as the west coast of Florida. Every year thousands of tourists visit Fannin Coun­­ty. The Wall Street Journal has named Blue Ridge as one of the ten best small towns for retir­ees.

For now Blue Ridge still has a small town look and feel, and Fannin Coun­ty is largely unde­vel­oped. But that will change as the economy improves, more people move here and the chang­ed demo­graph­ics attracts more development.

There are already signs of friction and fac­tions within the commun­ity over future develop­ment. Witness the recent controver­sies over park­ing meters, a parking ga­rage and a downtown de­vel­­op­ment authority in Blue Ridge. It is impos­sible to predict when this battle royale will start in earnest, but it is inevit­able that it will occur. It is also inevitable that devel­opment will win out in the end. That’s just the American way.

We can’t stop it but we can control it, and we need to start now before it is too late.

That’s my view. What’s yours?