High Country News, June 29, 2006

Summer Camp For Adults… That you can live in

By Sam Calhoun

Memories of summer camp are indelible. Many of us have such treasured memories and they have a tendency to expand as they mature, becoming almost tangible. Sometimes new memories pale in comparison.

But why are these memories relegated to the past? Why can’t they be our present and future?

Celebrated builder John Turchin has been posing these questions for years and now he’s created the answer right here in the High Country.

Welcome to Turchin’s The Lodges at Eagles Nest—the newest luxury estate offering in the High Country, set against the backdrop of the highest range of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The resort’s advertising states, “Eagles Nest is reserved for those who understand the beauty that surrounds them and live to discover it everyday.”

Situated on 1,300 acres, Eagles Nest rests upon what used to be called the West Bowl of Beech Mountain. More than 30 years ago, the site was slated for Beech Mountain Resort’s second golf course, but after Beech went bankrupt, the site became an impromptu track for four-wheelers and dirt bikes. Because the plat of land sits on the south side of Beech Mountain, Turchin refers to the area as “South Beech”—reminiscent of his former home in Miami.

“I feel when I come to North Carolina, I’m in a big camp and what I’m trying to create is a giant camp for adults and children to have fun together for the rest of our lives,” said Turchin. “I believe our children will keep us alive and we will stay young chasing our children and grandchildren. So, my whole philosophy behind my development is to stay young… and it’s built around kids.”

The idea for Eagles Nest came from a lack of alternatives to country club living.

“I don’t play golf. I’m not interested in living in a golf course community,” added Turchin, who has lived in Seven Devils as well as Hound Ears.

Turchin, along with his parents Lillian and Robert (the same Turchins whose name adorns the Visual Arts Center on the ASU campus), first came to the High Country in 1970 for a family summer vacation, “and we’ve been up here ever since,” added Turchin. John returned to Boone in 1974, fresh out of high school, to chase a career in art. He ended up leaving, but returned often to his parent’s home in Hound Ears. In the late 1990s, Turchin returned for good, leaving behind his budding career in the Miami nightclub industry.

His first purchase—made almost 7 years ago—was 250 acres in the foothills of Beech Mountain. He bought a four-wheeler and began to explore his new estate. In an unfortunate accident, he wrecked, breaking two legs—one of his own, and one of his wife Susan.

While Turchin was resting on his porch the next day, made as comfortable as possible with pain medication, a Realtor approached him and asked, “You want to buy that mountain?,” referring to the property that would become Eagles Nest. “And the rest is history,” said Turchin, who paid for the property in cash the next day.

Turchin then began to construct his dream.

“The only alternative to what we’re doing has always been a golf course community,” said Turchin. “We send our kids to camp—there are camps all over North Carolina—and why are the kids the ones who get to play? What happened to the parents? My idea is that the parents should live in the camp with their kids and experience and teach them there, instead of dropping their kids off and letting them have all the fun.”

The Eagles Nest plans include sites for only 105 estate homes, tailored to blend in with the natural surroundings and accent the vistas. At the bottom of the spectrum are cabin lots for under $1.5 million, graduating to lodge lots of 3 to 10 acres priced from $1 million to $4 million. At the top are ranch lots with roughly 30 acres of privacy; Turchin has only planned 20 homes for this 600 acres.

But you don’t simply get a house for that price, you get a finished estate, complete with interior design, furniture, appliances, linens, landscaping, wine in the wine cellar—you name it—with all the products coming from Turchin’s private design center, The Great Train Robbery in Banner Elk. Staffed with in-house designers, architects, interior designers and contractors, The Great Train Robbery can outfit an entire house with everything from building materials, air conditioning, central heat, sound systems, plumbing fixtures, frames, bedding, mattresses, linens, wine, art and picture frames.

“We sell lifestyles,” explained Turchin. “We’re trying to build a community around kids having fun forever, so it’s very important that we portray the lifestyle. We need families there. It’s not about how much money you have, it’s whether you fit the lifestyle.”

To find those families who support this lifestyle, Turchin and his wife host barbecues at the Nest’s BBQ pavilion every Saturday.

“[At these barbecues] the public is invited to come see what we’re doing—to experience what we’ve done on this mountain. See it; feel it; touch it. It’s not a sales promotion; it’s to see what we’ve done and how I believe we should develop these mountains. I’m building this place to look like a national park under the guidelines of the national park system,” said Turchin.

And when the public comes, it may very well be the closest they’ve come to summer camp for quite some time.

“We have every type of toy you can imagine up there on the mountain. We have a toy barn that’s full of bows and arrows, badminton, tennis, volleyball, and horseshoes, and motorcycles, and mountain bikes, and zip lines, and we have an equestrian center, BBQ pavilion, amphitheater, library,” added Turchin, who also has plans to build a ski slope for guests in the wintertime and has just completed one of the tallest climbing towers on the East Coast.

“So at these barbecues, people come from all of these other developments and bring their kids and they see that there is an alternative to the golf course community. There is someone that’s developing a place that’s a camp. This is a camp for adults to live in and have fun and it’s not exclusive to the people who live there. It’s also open to the public and we’ll have outside members being able to join as well. We’ll also have a hotel and full spa planned on the mountain in the near future.”

While Turchin’s target age for residents is 40 to 60, he has stocked the camp full of fun for all ages. From playgrounds for toddlers to motocross tracks for the daring teenagers; from counselors who assist with horseback riding, hiking, art classes, rock climbing and a host of recreational activities to organized sports, such as baseball and softball, involving the outside community, Turchin is constructing an all-ages, open-to-the-public circus of life… minus golf.

“The most important part of the whole development is that we need families and bodies to use it in order for it to succeed,” he said. “If I make this place so exclusive that nobody is allowed to come in and we just sit there and watch each other die—which is the typical community around here—they make it so exclusive that the public can’t come in; they can’t use it and everyone complains about who’s parking in their spot and ‘you’re not dressed appropriately to come into the club.’ That’s not what this is about. There’s a place for that and there’s a certain generation for that, but my ideal situation is families in there; they bring all of their friends and they’re having fun. Someone’s in the 600-acre equestrian center riding a horse, someone’s on a motorcycle, someone’s in the spa, someone’s reading a book in the library, and at the end of the day, we all congregate at the BBQ pavilion, there’s music playing, there’s chefs cooking barbecue, you come as you are—you’re muddy, you’re clean, however you may be—and you just entertain yourselves.”

Close to 130 local workers, working under eight regional contractors, are constructing the future estates of Eagles Nest. And one of those estates is Turchin’s, an estate he will soon share with Susan and their two kids, Jordan, 20, and Ashley, 22.

“I’m here for the long run. This is my house,” said Turchin. “I’m building this playground up here for me for the rest of my life.”

And he added, “This thing will mature, like a bottle of fine wine.”

For more information about the Lodges at Eagles Nest, click to
www.eaglesnestbe.com or www.turchinproperties.com or call 828-898-8645.