"Major" Development Will Bring Community Hub to Lake Toxaway. Also Congestion, Noise

Plans for the 107-acre project include houses, hotels, a 44-acre nature preserve and a needed community hub, developers say. But some neighbors want nature, not a "town center."

View south from the Longcliff Village property near Lake Toxaway

LAKE TOXAWAY — Drivers heading west on US 64 from Rosman pass factories, storage units, convenience stores and, closer to Lake Toxaway, entrances to high-end subdivisions.

What they don’t pass: a public space where residents from this stretch of highway can meet, eat, shop and launch hikes.

The lack of such a hub was highlighted in a 2018 study by a local business nonprofit, the Historic Toxaway Foundation. Bill Hackney and David Parks, partners in Toxaway Park LLC, plan to fill this gap with an 107-acre mixed-use development called Longcliff Village.

“The property that Bill and I purchased was identified as the town center” in the Foundation’s study, Parks said. “The heartbeat of this development plan is focused on the community.”

The headline of the press release announcing their plans called Longcliff a “Major Mixed-Use Development.” And in a county where developable land is scarce and big subdivisions such as Connestee Falls were first planned decades ago, just Longcliff’s residential and lodging components would make it one of the county’s most ambitious projects in years.

The partners plan two hotels offering a total of 64 rooms and as many as 160 residential units, ranging from condominiums costing about $500,000 to single-family homes expected to sell for well over $1 million.

But the plans also include a commercial center with stores and a restaurant, and public spaces such as a village green, amphitheater and 44-acre nature preserve.

Though the details have not been finalized — and Toxaway Park doesn’t expect to receive its required development permits until next spring — this preserve should provide a link to the adjacent Gorges State Park, Hackney said.

Some nearby residents agree with the need for the community hub the developers describe. Sophie Webster, who lives in the neighboring Toxaway Views condominiums, wrote to fellow residents that she would “love to be able to walk to a high-end restaurant/bar or grocery store and not have to . . . drive 15-20 minutes.”

She also wrote that Longcliff is a better use of the parcel than tightly packed “condos, a quarry, a big storage facility . . . (or) an RV park.”

But a part-time neighbor, Marilyn Beck, imagined another list of “consequences” that could come with the construction of Longcliff such as “traffic, congestion, razing of forest, and (noise and light) pollution,” she wrote in a letter to the Transylvania County Commission.

Considering that people like her bought property in this part of Western North Carolina to escape urbanization, she wrote:

“For those who want Lake Toxaway to become a city and believe it needs a ‘town center,’ I say think again.”

The Concerns

Residents of Toxaway Views have long worried about the fate of the 92-acre parcel at the heart of Longcliff, said Don Woods, president of its homeowners association. A previous development, Gorges at Lake Toxaway, received county approval to subdivide this property, built the current network of roads and set aside the conservation easement for the preserve.

This land had fallen into foreclosure by the time it was sold in 2012, according to county property records, which also show it was ultimately purchased by Toxaway Park in 2020 for about $1.3 million.

Woods’ experience with the previous development has left him leery about plans for Longcliff, he said. The earlier road construction created runoff and erosion at its border with Toxaway Views and the state park.

“There’s a lot of environmentally sensitive land around here,” he said, and on Toxaway Views’ land “the erosion continues to this very day.”

Given the previous developer’s struggles to provide water and septic service, he’s skeptical of Toxaway Park’s ability to serve the much denser Longcliff development.

“This big hotel and all that stuff. I don’t see it happening,” he said.

Traffic on the nearby stretch of US 64 is already congested from service workers who, because of the shortage of nearby affordable housing, must commute to Cashiers from Brevard and Rosman, Woods said.

“The traffic on US 64 is horrendous.”

Don Woods, president of Toxaway Views homeowners association

Traffic and Utility Plans

The Lake Toxaway area, like most of Transylvania, is not subject to county zoning. Woods said this might allow the use of the land to be discussed publicly, which he favors. Parks said the concerns Woods raised will be addressed in the permitting process.

An engineer on the project, Robert Burgin, said he is designing a plant with a capacity to treat 90,000 gallons of sewage per day.

Because the discharge will not flow into a water body such as nearby Bearwallow Creek, the plant does not need to be permitted by the state Department of Environmental Quality, he said. He will instead work through the Department of Health and Human Services under an “Engineer Option Permit.”

Both DEQ and Jim Boyer, the county’s environmental health supervisor and an authorized agent for DHHS, confirmed such permitting is allowed under certain conditions, including when the drainfield system is more than six inches below ground.

The Engineer Option is a relatively new process created by the state to streamline permitting, and it places less responsibility for ensuring plants’ effectiveness on regulators and more on engineers and other professionals, Boyer said.

“We will have a seat — maybe a back seat — at the table,” he said.

Burgin said he is working with the DHHS office in Raleigh, but Boyer said that he will conduct a “walk-through” of the plant before it goes online and that he has not yet been informed about Toxaway Park’s plans.

“I have not heard a peep about which permitting avenue they are going to pursue,” he said.

Jennifer Holloway, an environmental engineer with DEQ’s Public Water Supply Section in Asheville, said Toxaway Park has received permits for the three wells drilled to provide water service.

Both she and Woods noted one of the wells had been drilled on the conservation easement; Parks said he received permission for the well from the holders of that property, North American Land Trust.

Burgin said he has performed testing on the quality of the water the wells produce and on their capacity, which should be even larger than the sewage treatment plant’s — enough to, potentially, serve nearby properties.

“We will file the water plans (with DEQ) and those are being drawn up in my office as we speak,” Burgin said.

The county’s Subdivision Control Ordinance requires a state-approved plan for erosion control, and that will be completed before the application for the plat is submitted to the county, Parks said.

A state Department of Transportation map of annual average daily traffic shows nearby sections of the highway now receive 4,700 trips per day. Though capacity can vary depending on conditions such curves and elevation changes, the department “generally” considers congestion a problem for two-lane highways when trip counts exceed 9,000 per day, Lonnie Watkins, department engineer for the district that includes Transylvania, wrote in an email.

The development will be required to secure a permit for its driveway, and Parks said, regardless of state requirements, he plans to commission a traffic impact study needed for developments projected to generate more than 3,000 trips per day. He’ll probably have to, Watkins wrote:

“Traffic volume data has not been submitted to NCDOT at this time, but I anticipate a traffic impact analysis will be required.”

The Vision

Parks, who has worked as a custom home builder in the area for 22 years, said he recognizes the need for affordable and workforce housing, and acknowledged the validity of Woods’ concerns that the lack of it forces long commutes by service workers.

He said he has explored building reasonably priced housing in Rosman without success and is continuing that effort on properties nearer to Longcliff.

But he and Hackney also said they could have reduced the expense and complexity of their project if it fit the more common pattern of developments in the Highlands Plateau, the elevated land that includes southwest Transylvania and extends into Cashiers and Highlands.

Multi-million dollar houses on large lots — and historically, at least, behind closed gates — have long been the norm here, they said. Their relatively flat land can be easily developed and some of it offers spectacular views from the Blue Ridge Escarpment.

“We could have sold this property to one wealthy person for their estate or carved it up into estate lots and have that conservation easement for the private use of homeowners,” Hackney said.

Instead, they are working with Historic Toxaway to build and maintain an education center and about three miles of trail in the preserve, which will be accessible by car and, once people embark on their hikes, by foot, said Nory LeBrun, a founding board member of the Foundation.

Because the easement’s terrain is far less rugged that that of nearby natural areas, “an 85-year-old grandmother and her 3-year-old grandchild could walk the property easily,” LeBrun said.

The commercial district “will feature a general store, grocery, deli, outdoor outfitters, restaurant (and) tap room,’’ according to the press release. But it’s the public space — the preserve, green and amphitheater — that Parks most wanted to talk about.

“You could have a festival going on or a little concert happening,” he said, picturing a future evening at Longcliff. “Maybe the adults are hanging out at the restaurant and the kids are out on the grass, tossing a Frisbee or a football.”

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