Chattanooga Area News

[MLBrumby]

Aetna Mountain's River Gorge Ranch to grow into Tennessee's biggest mountaintop residential development

$1.5 billion of homes, resort planned over next decade

John Thornton, the owner of Thunder Enterprises, said he expects Aetna Mountain to double the amount of the investment in Jasper Highlands, a similar mountaintop gated community that Thornton developed over the past decade just 9 miles further west along Interstate 24.

"Jasper Highlands has been a tremendous project, but this could easily be double that investment," Thornton said in a recent interview about his latest project. "It's a beautiful piece of property with 23 miles on the brow, with three-fourths of the brow lots looking down on the Tennessee River Gorge. We couldn't be more excited to be kicking this project off."

Thornton said he hopes to have a new and wider road up to the top of Aetna mountain completed and utilities available in about a year, although the existing roadway up the mountain can be used to begin to develop some sites.

Thunder Enterprises, which is based in Kimball and continues to work on adding more sites at Jasper Highlands, should begin selling some sites for future homes at River Gorge Ranch later this month. Thornton said he envisions selling the 2,500 or so home lots over the next seven to 10 years.

River Gorge Ranch is well underway and a popular site for new luxury homes just up I-25 in Marion County.  

https://www.rivergorge.com/?utm_id=17564484944&ad_key=ascalon&ad_site_source=g&ad_placement&ad_position&ad_keyword=river gorge ranch

[KJHburg]

Just saw this today Chattanooga is one of the top 5 retiree relocation markets.

The Top Five Emerging Metros for Retiree Relocation - Commercial Property Executive (commercialsearch.com)

[MidTenn1]