But the middle of nowhere is precisely where a good number of people with money want to be.
This fact hasn't escaped resort developers, and when two Dallas, Texas-based corporations --American Resort Corporation and Lazarus Property Corporation -- bought the 2,300-acre Green Farms (once 6,000 acres) for $4 million back in 2000, heads turned among the 2.7 million households in a 200-mile radius of the historic site.
Historians were cheering. What was to become Green Farms Resort built restoration into the business plan for the resort. It was described as the last best hope for saving the old Green Mansion, built by Lafayette Green for his bride Ella, and for the Green Mills, which Preservation Kentucky Inc. lists as the state's most endangered historic site.
One lot buyer of the approximately 375 lots sold, however, says the dream has turned into a nightmare. There are no roads to lots or to the homes already built, no electricity, no water, no telephone lines other than what the lot owners paid for themselves.
And the Kentucky Attorney General's Office Monday (Feb. 28) announced it is filing suit against the Dallas developers charging violations of Kentucky's Consumer Protection Act.
The suit alleges residential building lots were sold "using false, misleading or deceptive practices," plus failure to provide promised amenities, roads and utilities.
The suit comes on the heels of a report in the Feb. 4 edition of Dallas Business Journal outlining an on-going fued between CEO Same Ware of Lazarus Property Corporation and partners Chuck Schram and Patrick Ramsier of American Resort Corporation.
The Dallas Business Journal reports the rift between Ware and partners Schram and Ramsier started on the plane they used to fly to Kentucky in 2000 to close the deal on the Green Farm purchase. It hasn't let up since, with charges and counter-charges as thick as the flocks of sparrows that used to pick up loose grain at active Green mills.
The Journal report lists $4 million as the sale price for the farm, which was sold by order of a judge after continuous bickering among descendants during the 1990s. This money came from Ware, the report said, and was considered a bargain.
Things get murky after that. According to the Journal, Ramsier reportedly went to Ware's office just before Christmas in 2002 and told him "we haven't made payroll in a month, and we're out of money."
Why they ran out of money is a major bone of contention between the two corporations' senior officers. American Resort blamed an economy sliding into the ditch, a war in Afghanistan and lot sales not meeting expectations as a result. They point the finger at Ware for failing to adequately finance the business plan.
But Ware told the Journal his original $2 million investment (down payment and closing costs) has turned into $8 million, and he added that it was costing him $50,000 a month to continue operating Green Farm since he took over the project in January 2003.
About 2,300 lots around Lafayette Golf Course, which has been upgraded by Golf Digest Magazine to a 4.5-star course (5 being tops) are waiting for buyers.
Ware told the Journal he plans installation of roads and utilities to the lots this spring and summer, but closer to home, the Grayson County Water District Manager Kevin Shaw said he "hasn't heard from anyone about water lines in the last year and a half."
It's the same story at Meade Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation, who report they have received no orders for power infrastructure, although they have submitted proposals in the past.
Sherry Blanford, president of the Homeowners Association and a former Florida title and mortgage agent who bought six lots as an investment in 2001, said she's heard it all before.
"It's a nightmare we can't seem to wake up from," she said Monday. She said that without the roads and other infrastructure, "my property is worthless. I can't build, can't finance it, and I can't sell it."
Blanford has managed to build a "little place with a front porch" on 7-tenths of an acre she owns behind the old general store. She fights from that spot. "I tell Sam (Ware) every time he comes up here and stays at the Mansion Bed & Breakfast that I can't afford to fight him in court, but I sure can sit on my porch and tell everybody who stops here what's happened," she said.
Blanford said people buying lots were promised a gated community, top of the line golf course, a health spa and swimming pools among other ritzy attractions.
But she claims most of the money has been flowing out of the resort and not into it.
"I bought here, and many others did, not for those fancy amenities," she said through a cold on Monday, "but the reason a lot of us bought here was for the beautiful and historic Green Mansion and mills; we wanted to see them restored."
Work on the mansion, once a palace on the Rough with 22 rooms, has been restored to the period 9-room bed and breakfast. Replicas have replaced the original antique furnishings that were sold to antique dealers before the Green Resort took ownership.
As Ware promised in 2003, some work has been done on the foundations of the old mills and a new bridge has been installed across Rough River, but Blanford is disappointed.
"It has been piecemeal work and those doing it don't know whether or not they'll be paid," she said.
"He (Ware) offered to sell the mills to me," she said, "but it will take at least $3 million to bring them back, and I don't have that kind of money, especially not now."
The Attorney General's suit asks the judge for an injunction halting any more lot sales "without full and complete disclosures, restitution, civil penalties and the appointment of a receiver to assist with restitution efforts."
The suit covers property in both Grayson and Breckinridge counties.
In his interview with the Dallas Business Journal, Ware said that if lot owners are "are pissed off because (they've) invested $16,000, I've got more than $7.5 million in the deal, and I've got no recourse whatsoever."
He called the middle of nowhere development "the biggest mess I've been involved with in 25 years."
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