Captains Cove Developers Fall Flat!

Originally developed in the early 1970's by Cal Burns & First Charter Corporation, Captains Cove in Greenbackville, VA has seen it highs and lows. Captains' Cove Golf & Yacht Club was designed by the same person who laid out Ocean Pines and the two communties are virtually identical when it comes to the size of lots, roads, easements, canals and more.

With over 4,400 lots on plats; marketing companies, real estate developers and local real estate agents have worked this piece of land on the Chincoteague Bay for decades.

Half of the project never had sewer and water brought to it and was marketed in the early days as the 'unbuildable' sections where salesmen told lies to potential buyers that one day it would be just like 'Ocean Pines' and they would be able to build on those lots.

In the meantime they would sell them as 'Membership' lots so that one could use the pool, golf course and marina. During the post "First Charter" period in the 1980's & 90's these 'unbuildable' lots never sold for much more than $500 after the original marketing company sold out the entire development in the 70's, using the same "high pressure" sales tactics that sold out Ocean Pines.

Building was slow from the beginning until the 90's with maybe 200+ houses built there with most being on the water or golf course. There were a few bursts of activity when several groups would come in and buy up lots for resale, but the original developer maintained control.

Then comes the real estate bubble from 2000 to 2005; and former Ocean City realtors of the Moore, Warfield & Glick fame saw the Cove as an opportunity they couldn't go wrong on.

The "new Captain's Cove" development group purchased all of the property owned by the original developer Cal Burns and the property held by the home owners association, along with the developer rights. They hired architects to design a new club house, indoor pool, & marina building. They put in new gates to the community, and began the process of petitioning the county to bring water and sewer to the unbuildable lots. The formerly 'unbuildable' sections were labeled by realtors as 'future development' lots, even though there was no legal basis for that label.

They had not met Atlantic's Mr. Wolf, nor the Fleming family with deep roots in Accomack County going back hundreds of years. These folks put together a group of residents that contested each and every method that the developers proposed to develop the 2,200 + 'unbuildable' lots. Their argument and one that is valid is that if all of those lots are developed the crap will have no where to go. The Chincoteague Bay does not empty as efficiently as it fills thus often leaving stale water in the bay for days on end. (hence the reason Chincoteague oysters have their unique flavor)

The Bay is easily polluted and it's health is questionable without the development dumping millions of gallons of sewage into its waterways.

Many options were explored and one was even to pump all of the sewage into trucks with trucks taking it to local farms and spraying it on the crops grown therein. This wasn't such a bad idea in theory, but then cost of diesel went through the roof and the reality of how many trips and to how many farms would have to be made, turned out to be not such a great idea. Additionally, crops meant for human consumption aren't allowed to be sprayed with human waste. The surrounding landowners refused to sell the 'new developers' the rights to spray crap on their land.

All the while this battle was waging between the developer and the citizens in and around the area the marketing team for the developers were selling this project to people who wanted the Ocean City area but were priced out of the market. Suddenly, papers advertising OC realtors were pushing Cove lots and homes. Prices for 'buildable' interior lots that were $5,000 in the 90's jumped to $50,000.00 or more. Golf course lots that were $8,000 to $10,000 during the 90's spiked up to over $100,000.00 while being pitched as a good investment. Canal & bayfront lots that were once a hard sell at $25,000.00 became a 'great investment' at $250,000.00 with greed and huge profits being paid to the agents and 'early investors' of what was once considered the white elephant of Accomack County.

Then came the 'marketing' of 2,200 unbuildable lots with no water, power or sewer and no permits or approved plans to develop these sections. These lots jumped from $500 per lot to $30,000 and more with hollow promises of future development by greedy realtors looking for a quick flip or fat commission. 'Investors' up and down the shore thought Moore Warfield and Glick were going to get a new sewage treatment plant built and they started buying all of the unbuildable lots they could get their hands on. The $500 'membership lots' were then being touted as 'future development' and sold for $30,000.00 to $150,000.00 or more each.

Now the tides have turned, the real estate market is in murkier water than the Chincoteague Bay on a slack tide in August, and not only is nothing being sold, but the prices are dropping like a lead balloon.

Now the astute developers have left PNC Bank holding the bag on about $18,000,000 in loans as they filed for bankruptcy protection last week, with PNC demanding the outstanding $22,000,000 loans secured by real estate. That's close to $40,000.000 bucks folks, bet on being able to obtain approvals to dump crap from 2,200 homesites in the Chincoteague Bay that had not been approved for 30-years by the original developer.

The original cost to develop Captain's Cove in the1970's was under $3 million dollars and the original developer sold out in about 3-years.

Hopefully things will go back to normal and regular folks can buy a house in the low $100s once again and Captains Cove can go back to being that strange little community that you know that if placed anywhere else on the face of the earth would be successfully huge and crowded. But it is a quirky little development that just doesn't seem to fit into any of those molds that we know from the outside world, and it is probably the reason that we love it.