Climbing New Heights

>>A few local developers and builders are trading beaches, palm trees and Gulf breezes for mountain vistas and tranquil lakes.

They’re heading to North Carolina and north Georgia, just like the wave of "halfbacks"—northerners who moved to Florida, and then migrated north again. Although the companies and the majority of their projects remain based in Southwest Florida, they’re dabbling in developments in mountain towns.

Naples-based Lundstrom Development is constructing its first mountain home on a 1.5-acre lot in Falling Waters, a community in Ellijay, Ga., about an hour from Atlanta. Stone, wood and shake shingles create a rustic alternative to the Mediterranean-style custom homes Lundstrom has built in such Southwest Florida developments as Lely Resort Golf & Country Club.

President and CEO Bob Lundstrom—whose son, Brad, started an Atlanta division a decade ago—had been searching North Carolina and Georgia for developments where he could build homes in the low million-dollar range.

"When I saw Falling Waters, it was just pristine, beautiful," Bob Lundstrom says.

Builders and developers diversifying to the north are taking notice of population trends, says Jack McCabe, of Deerfield Beach-based McCabe Research & Consulting. Young families are leaving Florida for jobs, and retirees are choosing to spend less time on the coast, driven away by high property taxes, insurance costs and the threat of hurricanes.

"The old adage that 1,000 people a day are moving to Florida I think now has absolutely become a myth. It’s only a fraction of that many people coming to the state," McCabe says.

Richard Soderquist, who has worked in Western North Carolina since the early 1970s, says the "Florida wave" arrives at predictable times, when construction here falls off. North Carolina is easy to reach by truck, says Soderquist, owner of Soderquist Construction Co. in Asheville, N.C.