To the Editor:

Savings and Loan Collapse. The year 1982 marked the beginning of supply side economics in which deregulation and tax cuts were viewed as the solution to stimulating corporate growth.

A Main Street law office without windows is an odd place for a such a good view.

But Waynesville attorney Frank Queen has had a front-row seat to the mountains from here, witnessing thousands of acres trade hands — land with scenic vistas, along creeks, in forests, behind gates, on farms, hugging cliffs and tucked in coves — during the real estate boom of the 2000s.

Randy Best was a rare bird in the development heyday of the 2000s. Where others just saw dollar signs, Best actually saw land.

“I would spend a month walking a piece of property after we bought it. I walked every inch and when I was done, I knew where every house site was going to be, where every septic was going to be, how the roads would lay,” said Best, a Haywood County native.