Unwanted subdivisions are our modern-day ghost towns

STEVENSON, Skamania County — They're so behind the times down here there's not one stoplight in the entire county. And that's a big point of pride.

So a couple of years ago, when developers started building two new subdivisions — the kind where the homes have granite countertops and price out north of $600,000 — it seemed like a mirage.

Prosperity, long a stranger here, was moving into one of the poorer counties in the state.

"We thought: If we build it, they will come."

That's David Bennett, an exuberant 56-year-old builder who figured the Columbia Gorge was a can't-miss opportunity.

He's now out a quarter-million bucks. He built 22 homes, out of 73 planned, before the project collapsed, a victim of the housing and banking meltdown.

All told, 51 lots went into foreclosure. Now the 28-acre Hidden Ridge subdivision really is a mirage. It's got new lamp posts lining freshly paved cul-de-sacs. But no homes, only weeds and cockeyed, rusting for-sale signs.

"They won't sell now at any price," Bennett said. "Not without giving them away."

His own house, in the neighboring Angel Heights subdivision, is in the red, too. He paid $539,000 for it two years ago. It wouldn't sell for that now. The house next door is on the market for $409,000, with no takers. The one next to that is in foreclosure.

We walk through the empty Hidden Ridge. Bennett tells of his dream of restarting the project, as soon as the current economic crisis subsides. As soon as he can get the banks to listen.

There are only 10,500 people in all of Skamania County. Yet the Gorge is so beautiful, Bennett is convinced luxury homes can sell here.

It strikes me that spots like this, common now in Vegas and Phoenix and San Diego, are our modern-day ghost towns. Abandoned not due to migration or new inventions like the automobile, as it was with the old ghost towns of the West. But due to frenzy.

"People got greedy, and it all got too heated," Bennett said. "We went too high, too fast for this little town."

Bennett went home, and we drove east in the rain. The radio was all a-panic about the Dow. At the edge of town were some bulldozers. They crawled across a hillside, cutting roads and cul-de-sacs for another planned subdivision, oblivious to the news.

Danny Westneat: dwestneat@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2086