Peak performance: despite the economic slump, Bobby Ginn vows to pull off the biggest...

Barrett Freeman steers a Toyota Tundra up the side of a mountain east of Boone and Blowing Rock, crunching along a steep gravel road whose sides are shored against erosion. This is the resort development of Laurelmor, and the terrain underscores its wildness and size. The west entrance in Watauga County peaks at 4,200 feet above sea level. At the lower entrance, straddling the Wilkes County line nine miles away, elevation has plummeted 3,000 feet. On Dugger Creek, a great blue heron soars above the rippling waters, and herds of deer blend with the underbrush, their white tails betraying them when they bolt.

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Freeman, 28, guides visitors and prospective buyers around the project. He studied religion at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg and Vanderbilt University. As he drives, he makes it clear he's a disciple of the man he works for. Awhile back, after driving 80 miles from Charlotte in a rented car, Edward Robert Ginn III took him on a tour of the resort. "Just like anybody else." A charismatic developer of high-dollar properties from the Caribbean to Colorado, Ginn grew up in a small South Carolina town. where the county courthouse had an outhouse. He can be self-effacing and even laugh at himself. Years ago, after a spectacular bankruptcy, local wags printed bumper stickers: "Honk if Bobby owes you." Rather than bristle, he got a grin out of it, acquaintances say.

Only time will tell if Laurelmor produces a new wave of Bobby Ginn bumper stickers. Bulldozers are at work on what will be the biggest private development ever in western North Carolina. It will compete with the ritziest, including Mountain Air, near Burnsville, where the rich arrive on private planes to play golf above the clouds, and The Cliffs at High Carolina, near Swannanoa, where owners will drive and putt on the first course Tiger Woods has designed on American soil.

"Everything he does is big," says Wayne Huizenga, the billionaire whose Port St. Lucie estate adjoins Tesoro, one of a half-dozen resort properties Ginn's company has developed and manages in Florida, its base since 2002. But this time, his big plans fly in the face of economic forces that have the real-estate market reeling. "Sales activity has slowed down dramatically, no question," says Doug Miller, a former civil engineer who oversees Laurelmor and the company's Burke Mountain development in Vermont. "The amount of tours we should be giving at this time of year is way down. A lot of our customers are tied up in Florida, and they can't sell what they've got there."