Rarity Club Development attracts more than $30 Million

Representatives of Rarity Communities sold more than 80 lots for a total of about $30 million over the weekend in an initial land offering on Nickajack Lake.

Chattanooga developer John "Thunder" Thornton spent three years and more than $7.2 million acquiring the 578 acres of once public land from the Tennessee Valley Authority.

"We're not selling dirt," Fred McArthur, executive vice president of Rarity Communities, said in reference to lots in the gated community that will feature a championship golf course, tennis facility, marina and 13 miles of hiking trails. "We're selling a very exclusive community with high architectural standards. ... We're selling a dream."

The lots purchased ranged in price from $250,000 to more than $500,000, officials said.  Mr. McArthur said most of the people buying the dream last weekend were from the baby boomer generation, and that wasn't by accident.  Rarity Communities had a business plan to take advantage of the 78 million baby boomers, many of them moving to the Southeast, he said.

Only a small percentage of baby boomers can afford to invest in a million-dollar retirement home, "but still, that number is huge," Mr. McArthur, 62 said.  Those 78 million folks are inheriting $13 trillion.  That' trillion with a "t," he said.  "It's the largest transfer of assets in the history of the world."

Michael DellaPolla, a 47-year-old airline pilot and businessman from Kennesaw, Ga., bought a piece of property with 100 feet of waterline on the lake for $550,000.  He said his best friend bought property in another Rarity development, and the company delivered on everything it promised.

"When my son gets out of college, we will retire here," said Mr. DellaPolla, who plays on a championship league tennis team in suburban Atlanta.  "I'm locking up the dirt on the water, and we wil build the house within two years."  Mr. DellaPolla said he didn't know exactly how far his lakefront property was from the planned tennis facility, but Rarity Communities associate John Wood jumped right in.  "He'll be able to walk to the tennis facility in five minutes," Mr. Wood said.  "It will be just far enough so he will be loose for his match."

The TVA board of directors recently adopted a policy of no longer selling public land for residential development, records show.  "This kind of opportunity is not going to happen again in my life," Mr. McArthur said.

Not everyone on Saturday was buying land to build a house.  John Games, originally from Detroit, who has lived in Rarity Bay just south of Knoxville for two years, said he was looking to buy proiperty as an investment.  Mr. Games took a helicopter ride courtesy of the sellers to look at the lots.

"The way Rarity Communities does it, the values (on their properties) continue to increase," he said.  "I've heard people at Rarity say with every breath we take the more money we make," Mr. Games said.

But the people at Rarity aren't the only ones who will prosper with the development.  The impact on Marion County will be "tremendous," Mayor Howell Moss said. 

Mr. Moss said the development would double the tax base of the county.  "They're talking about building somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 houses there," he said.  "With one-third of an acre bringing $300,000, that's a million dollars an acre.  Without a house being built on it that will equal the total base of the county."

Mr. Moss said the people buying land and building houses wouldn't put a strain on county services.  "They won't be raising five or six kids and flooding the schools," he said.  "They aren't going to be the kind of people filling up our jails.  They are just going to be decent, tax-paying citizens.

"We win all the way around," Mr. Moss said.

 E-mail Dick Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com