"I'm interested in the long term, in seeing a place of special character built where people can walk to a village center, to recreation and other facilities, all within a beautiful, natural setting," he says. Most of the 60-acre property has been in his family for three generations, and the village name is in memory of his grandmother. Growing up, Ragan spent summers there when his father operated a tennis camp on the property.

His commitment to special character can be seen in the 27 acres of open space threading through the site, the post office--the first building in the village center--and in his own house, a specially designed tree house structure set deftly into the woods.

His interest in building was sparked while studying architecture at St. John's College in Oxford, England, under the University of the South's study-abroad program. After graduating, Ragan says he considered going to medical school, but he began to think about doing something with the family property sooner rather than later. "It dawned on me that if I just sat on it, the area around might develop in a way that would work against doing something of exceptional quality," he says. He mentioned the idea to an architect, who gave him a copy of The New Urbanism (McGraw-Hill, 1993), a book describing the movement to create walking-scale neighborhoods and towns.

That was 1997, and by June of the next year Ragan engaged Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the celebrated designers of Seaside, Florida, and many other New Urbanist communities, to develop a plan. The traditional neighborhood development concept embodied in New Urbanism calls for narrow streets, small lots, and a mix of uses to capture the quality found in historic towns, features usually prohibited under today's suburban development standards. Ragan introduced the town of Black Mountain and its elected leaders to these concepts, and The Village of Cheshire was approved.

The town layout includes a village center with small-scale retail and office buildings adjacent to the highway and, nearby, town houses and live/work residential units. A small park with mature trees and boxwoods gives focus to the village center. Extending along a stream, a linear park threads upward through the residential heart of Cheshire with a series of neighborhoods ranged on the slopes above. Streets are narrow and lined with trees, native stone is used for retaining walls, and specially crafted lampposts and street signs are ornamented with wrought iron designs of native plants and fauna, all combining to give a civic character to the just-emerging village.

As with most New Urbanist developments, great attention is given to an architectural vernacular that contributes to the desired sense of place. Ragan and his team of architects looked to pre-World War II building practices in Black Mountain and nearby Asheville. The design standards for both commercial and residential buildings call for simple rooflines often pitched steeply enough to contain a second floor, exposed rafter tails, broad roof overhangs to shed water and provide summer shade, and functional front porches. Favored materials include clapboard, board and batten, log planks, cedar shakes or shingles, pebble dash, stucco, and stone, also found in earlier buildings and neighborhoods in the mountains.

The Village of Cheshire has nine houses completed and another half-dozen or so under way, most of them along Cheshire Drive. The post office, village center building, retail area, and tennis facility have also been completed. Duany and Plater-Zyberk review all proposed designs through their Charlotte office and, with Ragan, shepherd them through construction to ensure they meet the standards. Ragan's house, designed by architect Seth Harry of Woodbine, Maryland, represents the craftsman-style aesthetic shaping the village. With a small footprint but three stories to take in the views, the house has a native stone foundation, shake shingle exterior walls, dark-green painted trim, and a double-pitched roof with deep overhangs supported by wood brackets.

On a wooded ridge above his own house, Ragan is beginning development of a cluster of tree houses like his own, all inspired by the little open-air shelters elevated amid the trees that once housed visitors to his father's tennis camp. He is even excited about the guest parking that will serve these houses in the trees. "It won't be just a parking lot but something like the overlooks you find on the Blue Ridge Parkway," he says. "Residents will want to walk up there just for the view looking out to the mountains."