The hot topic of conversation these days is McCaysville, Georgia. There’s a gentleman by the name of Michael Galinski who is buying up McCaysville. His outfit is called McCaysville Properties, and he’s said to own a lot of commercial property somewhere in Florida, West Palm, perhaps. I know for a fact that some of this is true, because I sold him a city block on East Tennessee, the one that backs up to the renovated park on the river. I haven’t met him, but they say he’s just a regular guy, other than being really, really rich. All I can tell you about him from personal experience is that he drives a pretty hard bargain, as my home folks would say.
Rumor has it that he offered a million for the Copperhill Mason’s Lodge, and was turned down. Rumor also has it that he has bought the Blue Ridge Mason’s Lodge on East Main, in the heart of the commercial district.
Apparently, he is telling everyone that he is going to turn McCaysville into the next Gatlinburg, and from what I’ve heard and overheard in McCaysville, there are a lot of people drinking the Kool Aid. They say that McCaysville has everything Blue Ridge doesn’t, like a river running through it, and a lot of reasonably priced property ripe for development. Well, the reasonably priced part is correct. The city block sold for $370,000, millions below what it would have sold for in downtown Blue Ridge. But McCaysville also has something else that Blue Ridge doesn’t have, which is the biggest Superfund site in the southeast, and a chemical company that still – as far as I can tell – has a valid sulphuric acid permit.
Needless to say, this is a very interesting project, and I’ll follow its progress with much interest. For all I know, it’s morning in McCaysville.