David Bear, Post-Gazette
	Rafters on the New River approach the New River Gorge Bridge, the world's longest single-span, steel-arch bridge and the second-highest bridge in the United States.

FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. -- 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 so peaceful a place 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. Mr. 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.

Mr. 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, Mr. Wagner says, is the $1.1 billion that a West Virginia University economist calculated the project will mean to the region's economy. Mr. 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.

Commissioner Matt Wender cast the dissenting vote.

"I was not against the housing project per se. I thought the whole process was moving too quickly," he said.

The "rim" of the gorge has never been adequately defined, he said, so he is worried about housing developments encroaching on it.

"We all should be concerned about killing the goose that lays the golden egg," Mr. Wender said. "The history of West Virginia is dotted with short-term corporate gains that have done long-term harm."

Bats and rafters
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.

"We don't know the measure of impact this will have on those two species, and that's a concern," Mr. Stephens said.

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, Mr. Arnold said, but it does not seem to bother visitors.

Somebody nearby shot a turkey as he spoke. Hunting is allowed in a national river such as this one, but not in national parks.

"This is not a wilderness area," Mr. Arnold said. "People hear the hunters here. They see building going on every single day in and around the park. When I look at everything, I think these aesthetically pleasing houses should give us more diversity, a bigger tax base and better schools."

Mr. Arnold and various partners sold property to Mr. Driggs, who then embarked on his housing development.

At 71, Mr. Driggs says he is not looking for enemies, nor does he think he should have any. He 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.

Mr. Driggs downgraded the zoning of his land to residential, but says nobody credited him with being sensitive to the park's best interests.

"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."

Mr. 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, Mr. 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.

"I have never shrunk from questions about the case," he said. "It has had no negative consequences on my life or my ability to borrow money."

He and his four grown children operate eight hotels in Western states, including one 70 miles from the Grand Canyon. Mr. Driggs' wife, Kay, is a native of West Virginia, so they are enthralled with the idea of developing homes in an area searching for economic progress, he said.

Though his career in the savings and loan business ended badly, Mr. Driggs said it enabled him to learn the intricacies of development projects. He says he performed well for clients for years, and blames the problems he had on federal tax legislation that strangled the savings and loan industry.

Mr. 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.

Finding the right buffer
Mr. 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 Mr. Wagner.

"We'll have a 150-foot buffer of trees and rhododendrons. We're going to protect and maintain the integrity of the land," he said.

Aside from the park service, Mr. Wagner says he has not heard a discouraging word about building homes in the gorge.

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.

Residents in the small towns of Cunard and Brooklyn, who rely on aged, ineffective septic tanks, also may be able to hook into the new system, thereby stopping sewage from polluting the river.

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.

Mining "posed a far greater risk for erosion and menace, and thus residential development is preferable," he wrote in a letter this month to Fayette County officials saying Land Resource Companies had met all code requirements for its initial development.

Mr. 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."

County Commissioner Wender has a similar concern. Lots in the Land Resource Companies' site will be as small as a third of an acre, creating the potential for housing density that everybody will notice, he said.

Mr. Driggs, though, says all the sound and fury about scenic views has no merit. He maintains that his development and the one done by Land Resource Companies will barely be noticed.

Plus, if fishermen, rafters or hikers catch a glimpse of the new neighbors, they will not recoil in horror, he said.

"Since when has anybody complained about seeing a nice house?" he said. "Anyway, I'm going to give them a development that keeps the West Virginia forest in place."