REAL ESTATE Stu Rifkin remembers hitting the links at the Swannanoa Golf and Country Club, which straddled the rolling peaks of Afton Mountain, and thinking about what those 236 acres could become. Those memories came rushing back to him this past winter when the property was listed for sale. "It's an uncut gem," Rifkin told The Daily Progress.
"The views up there are spectacular." With golf falling in popularity across America and three generations of the course's owners dying within a few years, redeveloping a tract near two major highways and one national park seemed obvious. Adding to the chance of change, Rifkin thought, was another death-induced ownership shift.
Until he died last summer, James "Phil" Dulaney controlled the adjacent 600-acre tract featuring the original Swannanoa, a 1912-era Italian Renaissance revival mansion whose scale, materials and workmanship rival those of the famed "summer cottages" of Newport, Rhode Island. "You could turn the mansion into a wedding venue with rooms you can stay in," said Rifkin. But as he started mulling over the mansion's deferred maintenance backlog and the sheer size of the combined tracts spanning Augusta and Nelson counties, Rifkin, who works in real estate, said he realized that a redevelopment would require more capital than most developers could muster.
"It's a job for Paul Manning, or a consortium of Paul Manning, Hunter Craig, and Jaffray Woodriff," he said, listing of a who's who of Central Virginia real estate inve.