A New Normal Community | By Jason Reagan

Blue Ridge Mountain Club:

Building a “New-Normal” Community, One House at a Time

By Jason Reagan

While the High Country continues to see a boom in housing demand, with would-be buyers finding a new home hard to locate, Blue Ridge Mountain Club (BMRC) continues to do what they’ve always done best—build quality mountain homes amid a tranquil, active mountain community.

Located near Boone and Blowing Rock, BRMC sits on more than 6,000 acres just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. In addition to offering move-in ready homes, new semi-custom builds or fully customized homes, BRMC offers a peak experience in High Country living. Amenities include fishing, UTV trails, hiking, dining, fitness center, live events and more.

Unlike some real-estate developments that are scrambling to find available inventory during the recent buying surge, BRMC approaches things differently. Demand is not a problem because the community’s housing team is always building to meet demand, with no signs of slowing down.

All about Community

“I think any discussion about BRMC still starts with our mission,” said Jim Pitts, BRMC’s General Manager. “Our mission is to build community and it has always been our intent to nurture the spirit of community.”

Nurturing that sense of community and mountain living has proven to be the right mission at the right time. It wasn’t always like that. Following the recession of 2008, which popped the luxury real estate bubble in the High Country, BRMC struggled, Pitts said. But by 2018, something changed. BRMC began adding year-round amenities that made the club unique, including a grill and a wellness center, as well as adding newly constructed homes, about five to seven in 2018.

Pitts said his team expected to build no more than 15 homes in 2019. But effective marketing efforts and word of mouth changed their plans. “We went into 2019 expecting to build 12 to 15 homes to starting to build 20-25 homes.” And that number continued into 2020 despite the outbreak of COVID-19 and grew to a pace of 30-35. In fact, a shift in the way people began to think about life, work and family during the pandemic continued to push growth and interest in BRMC. Today, BRMC is on pace to build about 50 new homes per year.

A New Paradigm

2020 changed everything, from our sense of community to what it means to balance work and family. As such, people began to realize they can break out of the pre-pandemic paradigm—living in a metro-adjacent suburb and commuting 30-60 minutes to an office building. Work can be wherever we live. And for many, it just makes sense to build a new life in the Blue Ridge Mountains at communities like BRMC.

“I would say the culture of family and the culture of work has shifted dramatically, Pitts said. “And this is largely due to the pandemic.

“So, what the pandemic taught us is that family is more important than we ever thought,” he added. “People found themselves having only family for social content

and connection—you saw the big shift of families figuring out how to enjoy themselves. We also saw a big shift of businesses learning new ways to conduct business.”

And as residents of Charlotte, Atlanta and Greensboro discovered, pristine, active communities like BRMC are in perfect alignment with the values of the “newnormal” family.

“What people learned for themselves is: ‘Why would I not live where I really want to be versus living where my job is?’” Pitts noted. Since BRMC offers highspeed fiber-optic Internet, a member’s office is virtually anywhere they are, on their custom-made balcony overlooking a breathtaking vista, at the clubhouse or on the grill patio. And unlike many mountain clubs, BRMC’s amenities are open yearround for a four-season experience.

“BRMC is basically a completely contained community—not isolated, but certainly a completely contained community where you can pull in here and not really ever have to do much in order to satisfy all your needs,” Pitts said. And those needs go beyond housing and dining. BRMC employs a recreation manager whose sole job is to figure out vibrant programs—rafting, hiking, biking, fireside chats, book clubs and music. A complete mountain experience.

The Trail Ahead

As to the future, BRMC is banking on the emergence of Millennials who are finding themselves new parents seeking a less hectic pace of life and work.

“Millennials are much more technologically savvy,” Pitts said. “They have already been working in jobs where all they need to start is their computer and their cell phone. BRMC is the perfect place for people to be able to work remotely, enjoy nature and get back to family—so that’s where the trends are really going.” To meet the expected demand, BRMC is developing a new village called The Meadows within the club that will include its own restaurant, and field house that will sport an indoor pickleball court, a golfing simulator and a virtualreality experience.

By continuing to respond to the wants and needs of a changing homebuyer, BRMC is building a unique kind of value, Pitts said. “Value is not just about price value. Value has to do with the cachet of being adjacent to Blowing Rock and Boone, being the closest to the market, having a system for delivering homes to people who don’t have to worry about a thing other than bringing their toothbrush at the end of the day.

“We’ve been really fortunate over all these years because we had a lot of really dedicated, loyal and committed members in the early years of Blue Ridge Mountain Club that all had an affinity for the same thing—enjoyment of nature and living in the mountains.”

Learn more about Blue Ridge Mountain Club and view a virtual map of the property at blueridgemountainclub.com.