Attend any Fannin County Board of Commissioners (BOC) meetings and it won’t be long before someone speaks up about county-owned property in McCaysville. What’s it all about? Why is this topic seemingly never ending? What was Project Orchard?Fannin County’s nine-member Development Authority (DA) is a board with one full-time member: Director Stephanie Scearce. The along with many of functions one of the purposes of the DA is to entice companies and help them move to Fannin County.

As an authority, the DA not only has the power to cast votes, but can also buy property and take out loans on behalf of the County. By taking out a loan for $260,000, the DA was able to buy the old Levi’s Factory.

Once the DA purchased this property, it leased the building to Kismet Rubber. The lease payments from Kismet Rubber were applied to the original loan the DA acquired. After a few years, Kismet Rubber bought the property from the County for one million dollars.

This money sat in the bank accruing interest for five to six years. Scearce says this money was then used to buy two sites. One of the sites was the textile facility that gave Fannin over 60 new jobs. The other site was a tract of land in McCaysville, which cost $400,000.

It is this 10.87-acre piece of property that keeps reappearing in BOC meetings.

Scearce explained how the DA found out about the site:

“That site had been sitting there for a while, so we decide to look into it. I actually brought it to the Board’s attention that we should investigate it as a potential property.”

Scearce said the property was flat and ready for building on. It was set up with connections to water, sewer, telecommunications and fiber optics. She said when the Project Orchard came up; the DA felt

“it (the property) was just perfect; we had to have it.”

It was because the site had all of these amenities that the DA paid full price for the property in a declining market.

Several factors lead to the purchase of the property itself, primarily that this would be a property the County could use to persuade companies to relocate to Fannin County. At that point, the County had no such ideal property.

Project Orchard was another factor that lead to the purchase of the McCaysville site.
Project Orchard was a company that was looking for a community to locate in. The DA was working with them to try and bring

“a back office center to Blue Ridge.”

Project Orchard work with DA during two-year recruitment efforts of its relocation to Fannin County. In 2010, The DA unanimously voted to purchase the almost 11-acre McCaysville site. In hopes that this would show the Project Orchard Company they were serious about working with them.

After purchase and long talks the company revealed that Fannin County was one of two final candidates for its relocation. And Fannin County didn’t turn out to be the winner. In November of 2010 DA received a statement saying the company was going to wait on a relocation project.

Scearce and the DA played down their apparent loss.

“It (Project Orchard) wasn’t the main reason we purchased the property, but it played a big role,”

Scearce said.

Scearse was not able to reveal the name of the company the DA was recruiting.

Since Project Orchard never came the piece of property has just been setting vacant. Currently, Scearce says the DA is in the preliminary stages of constructing a spec building on the empty McCaysville site.

However, residents of Fannin County aren’t content with the answer the DA has offered about the purchase of this property. Arguments have arisen citing the fact that since the land was for sale, the company could have bought it outright instead of planning to rent it from the DA. Some citizens want details about how the DA knew the Project Orchard Company was a serious player, and more importantly, what the name of the Project Orchard Company was.

One thing is for sure: Someone has to answer these questions eventually.