Gatlinburg-based Greenbrier Builders and Developers has purchased 400 acres adjacent to the Pisgah National Forest and Waynesville watershed with a contract to purchase an adjoining 400 acre parcel for an upscale housing development. The site is located up Allens Creek about five miles from downtown.

The tract, named Highlands Forest, will be divided into custom and semi-custom home sites. Custom home sites, ranging in size from one and a half to 12 acres, begin at $185,000. Semi-custom home sites allow buyers to choose from five cottage-style house plans developed by Sylva architect Odell Thompson, starting at $455,000.

One of Highlands Forest’s selling points is land preservation.

“We have been working diligently to develop a community that the land told us we could have,” said Glenn Percy, manager of Greenbrier Builders. “We didn’t come up with a plan and force the plan upon the land.”

Percy compared the concept to that of Jackson County’s Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,300-acre, environmentally conscious development where building has been restricted to only 350 home sites and approximately two-thirds of the land is set aside in a conservation easement.

“They became our model,” Percy said.

Greenbrier has hired the same land planner and landscape architecture firm used at Balsam Mountain Preserve — Melrose Design Group — to develop both Highlands Forest and a second 245-acre tract the company has purchased near the Buncombe County line. About 180 acres of the Highlands Forest property will be preserved as woodland, largely through the creation of a corridor linking the development with the Pisgah National Forest and Waynesville watershed. All homes will be subject to an approved builder program in which only pre-selected contractors will be permitted to work within the development and a focus will be placed on energy efficient building using gas and solar power.

“We thought similar to Balsam Mountain ‘(builders) are going to have to fit in here with what God gave us’,” Percy said.

The Greenbrier company was formed in 1993. About a year and a half ago Percy’s partners asked him to look at property in Haywood County. He declined the offer to buy, but learned that the county had a lot to offer.

“I saw just how much better Haywood County was than any place else that I had seen,” Percy said.

Last September Greenbrier bought the 245-acre tract along the Buncombe County line. It was during a trip to visit this property that Percy got a phone call about another piece of property that had just gone on the market.

By the end of the day, Greenbrier was signing a contract and Highlands Forest was born.