The Land: The Lakemaker

The area is a shambles. Gas and elec tric pipes litter the landscape. Giant earth movers snarl uphill and down. A tornado knocked the roof off the country-clubhouse even before it was finished, and as for the golf course it is still nothing but rough. Worst of all, the lake bed is dry. Yet customers are descending in droves to buy up lots in a new real estate development called the Lakes of the Four Seasons, a 20-minute drive from Gary, Ind. In less than two months, they have bought 550 of the 2,500 lots. Though prices start at $3,500 for 10,000 sq. ft. and climb to $20,000 for an acre, half the buyers have been paying cash.

One Swell Swoop. “People,” says Lakebuilder Thomas J. Perine, chairman of Indianapolis’ U.S. Land, Inc., “have the same motivation to go to water as birds have to fly south in the winter.” Perine, 34, is capitalizing on that motivation all across the country by building lakes, then selling off the land around them for residential resort use. The lakes are no little waterholes. The Four Sea sons project will have 288 acres of water in four lakes, with twelve miles of shoreline. Since hitting on the idea three years ago, Perine has already finished lakes of similar size outside Cleveland and Chicago, is now building others near Kansas City and San Francisco and a 500-acre lake in Virginia, 45 minutes south of Washington, D.C.

Perine starts with a rural valley near a metropolitan center that is fed by a fresh water stream which can be readily dammed. He makes his lakes in one swell swoop that takes less than a year and keeps speculators from driving up the prices. In that time, he puts in the roads and services and, as a fillip, adds country clubs, tennis courts and swim ming pools. Each project is carefully landscaped; there is some kind of permanent open space—lake, golf course or park—within a few hundred feet of every lot. To protect property values, deed restrictions are tight: building plans must be approved in advance by Perine’s staff; only one single-family home may be erected on any one lot; and houses must be completed six months after construction starts.

Floating Home City. Lake Holiday, an hour west of Chicago, has been open scarcely a year, but Edmund Faltz and his family have already floated a small armada of three boats. Says Mrs. Faltz: “The lake is just perfect for us. My husband used to play golf. Now we do things together as a family.” Most of Perine’s new lake dwellers use their houses for weekends and vacations, but some fall in love with the idea and decide to make it permanent. Angelo Clements, for example, plans to live year-round at the Lakes of the Four Seasons as soon as his house is finished. “I don’t care about the extra hour’s drive to work,” he says. “I figure the Four Seasons is worth a lot more than that.”

With leisure and affluence increasing while available shoreline is diminishing, there are plenty of lakes for Ferine to build. Even now he is planning “super-colossal” projects for 10,000-lot communities built around lakes with 30 miles of shoreline. He is also drawing up plans for what he calls “Floating Home Cities” on the California and Florida coasts-artificial, fully serviced peninsulas or keys to which boat owners can plug in. “Why live in a trailer miles from the sea when you can live on a houseboat in a Floating Home City?” Ferine asks.