Dickie Foster wheels his white Lincoln Navigator through mud puddles and splashes past towering pine trees twisted by ocean gales. A bull of a man, Foster thrusts his thick arm at the series of sand traps being hacked out of a huge, 1,700 tract near the southern tip of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. "This is where the Arnold Palmer golf course ends and the Jack Nicklaus one begins," he says. "Had to get them together. Called them up and said, ‘Jack, would you work with Arnie on this thing?’ He called back and said they would. But they both wanted to know: Whose course starts first? Both wanted to be the act to follow. They’re that competitive."

When they open next spring, the golf courses will showcase a budding residential and resort extravaganza called Bay Creek at Cape Charles that could make Foster and his backers several million dollars. Besides the signature golf courses, there will be a 224-slip, deep-water marina, a resort and convention center and houses, ranging in price from $170,000 to well over $1 million, for about 3,000 people. It will be the latest of deluxe developments for Foster’s Baymark Construction Co. The company is based in Virginia Beach, across the 17.6-mile-long Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel linking the remote Eastern Shore with the metroplex of South Hampton Roads.

Given the economic sluggishness of this remote but beautiful region, one would think that residents might cheer a project such as Bay Creek as a welcome provider of jobs. But some see it as a harbinger of unwanted development, regardless of how well-planned Bay Creek might be. If another 10 or 20 residential projects like it are built, they believe, the quaint character of the Shore and its sensitive coastal ecosystems will be destroyed. Such a prospect seems more likely since the $20 round-trip fare may be lowered soon because the commission that overseas the Bridge Tunnel has several new members who favor doing so. "If they get rid of the tolls, we’ll look like Virginia Beach," says one man as he sits in a rocking chair outside Watson’s Hardware in downtown Cape Charles near the Bay Creek development. "An awful lot of land will developed. It’ll be a mess."

Or will it? Conventional wisdom about rampant growth may be dead wrong regarding the Eastern Shore. Fact is, the region has transcended the usual friction between Babbitt-like boosters and tree-hugging environmentalists. The Nature Conservancy, a national environmental group with deep pockets, has taken huge tracts of prime developable land off the market by buying it and placing it in untouchable sanctuaries. The group has sponsored cottage industries compatible with the area’s fragile ecosystem and built a broad-based constituency for controlled development. Taking a cue from developers, but with a twist, the Nature Conservancy has even begun building its own subdivisions with nature in mind. Its work, coupled with the difficulty of assembling developable tracts of land and the still-questionable market economics of doing so, suggest that fears of out-of-control growth are unfounded.

There is virtually no oceanfront property available for development. Most is owned by the federal government or by the Nature Conservancy, which has a lock on 60 miles of ocean shore, 13 barrier islands and 45,000 acres of salt marsh, beach and upland. Much property is still jealously held by old Shore families disinclined to sell. Not only is obtaining environmental permits a long and arduous process, but developers face other problems, such as finding qualified builders, who are in short supply locally, and lenders willing to back big developments. Northampton County, the more southern of the two Shore counties, does have 32,000 individual tracts with septic tanks that have been zoned residential, but these are chopped up piecemeal and would have to be brought into larger projects. As for Bay Creek, Foster got a leg up by piggybacking the development onto a failed 1980s project to build rigs to drill for oil offshore, picking up extraordinarily choice real estate and elusive environmental permits in the process.

That’s just fine with Shore natives. They say that anything other than moderate growth could put at risk the two pillars of the region’s beleaguered economy: tourism and agriculture. "If you are looking for an easy, relaxing time, so different from Virginia Beach or Ocean City, look here. But if the Shore loses its uniqueness, then we lose our advantage," says David Parker, former executive director of the Eastern Shore Chamber & Tourism Commission and a hotel operator in Accomack. Should lower tolls bring a burst of growth, he says, it would be concentrated at Northampton County’s southern tip, closest to Tidewater cities. Parker and others say Northampton has inadequate controls. "There’s very weak zoning over there and the counties don’t have the staff to handle it," notes Trip Pollard of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville.

If the growth threat does loom, it faces a formidable foe. The Nature Conservancy, with a million members nationwide, is a quiet but powerful force on the Shore. During the past several decades, it bought up thousands of acres to create one of the largest protected areas left on the East Coast. The group’s dunes, creeks and undulating marshes provide safe haven for crab, fish larvae and birds of all types, including peregrine falcons and the tropical warbler, a rare species that stops off coastal Virginia on its annual pilgrimage to the equator.

In recent years, however, the Nature Conservancy has redirected its tactics, believing that just buying and preserving sensitive areas is not enough. "We could still fail," says John M. Hall, director of the Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve. "Pretty is not our goal. The critical area is what’s between the ocean shore and the barrier islands." To protect the critical zone of creeks and marshes, the group is undertaking new projects to encourage small businesses and develop real estate.

By setting up cottage industries that play to the Shore’s natural advantages, the Nature Conservancy hopes to stop the out-migration of lower-income residents and to blunt criticism from developers that conservation does nothing to help the sagging Shore economy. The group established Citizens for a Better Eastern Shore, which meets at town halls and churches to convince residents that conservation of the area’s sensitive ecology is in everyone’s interest. It encourages people to lobby county supervisors for environmentally minded zoning rules. Another group, the Northampton Economic Forum, works to develop cottage industries to create jobs and stem out-migration. "We don’t want a situation where poverty creates desperate decisions about development, especially in Northampton County, where 25 percent of the homes are substandard," Hall says. He notes that many homes lack proper plumbing, and some even have dirt floors.

The Developers: Dickie Foster and Realtor Ginny Sancilio consulted ecology groups as they built Bay Creek, due to open this spring.

Residents of lower-income, mostly black communities seem to welcome the Conservancy’s efforts. "I think it’s been a lifesaver, not just for habitat, but for communities," says Alice Coles, director of Bayview Citizens for Social Justice. She says her organization linked up with the Nature Conservancy in the mid-1990s after Bayview and two other mostly black towns fought off efforts by the state to build a prison nearby. Bayview residents and Conservancy officials started trading notes on their concerns, and soon the Conservancy was helping Bayview apply for a federal grant to help improve drinking-water quality. That partnership has since extended to monitoring Northampton County’s zoning law changes and pushing for controlled growth. "They are trying to protect what God has conserved for so many years," says Coles, whose ancestors came to the Shore as slaves in the early 1700s.

To help in that effort, the Conservancy is trying to revive the failing potato industry and eventually provide jobs for lower-income families. It encourages farmers to grow Hayman potatoes, a local variety noted for its sweetness. The Conservancy has taken Haymans to Washington and introduced them to chefs at gourmet restaurants. It also is processing them into potato chips at a factory in North Carolina, but eventually Hall hopes to open a Northampton County facility that will employ more than 20 residents. Coles says the project is a hit in her community. "It’s put Bayview people in high spirits. Even kids go over and pull the grass off the potatoes to help out."

The potato chips are marketed by Blue Crab Bay Co., a firm in nearby Melfa that makes brand-name seafood sauces, soups and nuts. It even makes a Bloody Mary mixer called "Stingray" that is featured in a bar scene in this summer’s hit movie "The Perfect Storm." Pamela Barefoot, a Richmond native who founded Blue Crab Bay 16 years ago on the Eastern Shore, says she’s happy to help environmental causes and the Shore’s economy. "It was ... very, very difficult for me to begin this business so far away without start-up capital, but I’ve come to love the peace and quiet," she says. She’s against lowering tolls and wants growth tightly controlled. "Traffic on [U.S.] 13 is already so awful, and it will get worse."

In an even more radical departure from traditional environmentalist tactics, the Conservancy hopes to influence the quality of development by getting into the business itself. Near Nassawadox is Broadwater Farms, a 250-acre tract of woods, cornfields and marshes that the Conservancy wants to develop. The twist is that instead of taking advantage of existing zoning and squeezing up to 400 homes on the tract, the Conservancy is limiting development to 15 units clustered in two areas on lots from one to three acres. "This is what we decided, using a formula we have on how many homes could be built without having an impact on the ecology," says David Harris, the group’s director of land programs. The formula considers such factors as septic-tank runoff and the proximity of residences to wetlands. Buyers must agree to strict covenants that regulate land use and prohibit subdividing the property. "We used to buy land and sit on it," explains Harris, a former Navy aviator and real estate developer. But it was time for a new tack. "We recognize that development is going to come to the Eastern Shore."

At the moment, four lots are developed at Broadwater Farms. Harris says 125 people called the Conservancy about buying lots, and the group invited 25 from the top of the list into a lottery. Of those, 10 have committed to buying one-acre lots. The Conservancy has six possible real estate projects in all, including two near Nassawadox, one near Cape Charles, one near Oyster and two in Accomack County.

Meanwhile, the Conservancy is working with the Eastern Shore of Virginia Regional Development Partnership to develop three posh, small hotels that would feature haute cuisine and eco-tours of nearby estuaries. Two would be in the manor houses of large farms near Exmore and Onancock. A third would be would be on the site of the famous Wachapreague Hotel, a major attraction for Northerners in the early 1900s that burned down in the 1970s. William J. Callnin, chairman and managing director of the Virginia Beach consulting firm Cayuga Hospitality Advisors, is looking for a developer for the resorts.

The Wachapreague project would have the Nature Conservancy play a key role, since it owns the land where the old Inn stood and would have an equity stake in the project. There aren’t other viable alternatives, Callnin says. Because of Foster’s Bay Creek project and a $150 million development in nearby Maryland, lenders fear the market wouldn’t support another gargantuan project. "They worry they’d not get lending for a third large one," Callnin says.

While the Nature Conservancy’s programs may serve as a guide for sustainable development, they are still limited in scope. Contrary to the fears of those worried about rampant growth, development of any kind won’t come easily. Most of the residential development so far has been renovations of older structures, such as farmhouses, or custom-built new homes on winding creeks. The buyers are typically retirees or younger, moneyed executives looking for a second home. The only new residential housing of any size is near the northern end of Accomack County, where NASA operates the Wallops Island Space Facility and the Navy has expanded a missile test facility. Construction labor is tight, and quality builders are booked for the next two years. Ordinary laborers aren’t generally available or have taken jobs with newly expanded poultry operations. "There’s virtually no speculative building on the Eastern Shore. It’s extremely risky," says John Morgan, of Coldwell Banker Harbour Pointe in Exmore. "I believe that the Eastern Shore can absorb some moderate growth," he says. "In the three decades I have been here, I haven’t seen any noticeable population growth." A county like Northampton, with a population of roughly 16,000, can’t sit and watch as it loses industries. "You have to look at some ways to turn that around. You look at tourism, you look at golf courses on Cape Charles."

Fears of big residential projects exploding onto the scene and ruining the Shore have yet to pan out. There have been scares before, he says, notably in the 1980s when "developers were buying up waterfront property as fast as they could." County planning officials were busy night and day keeping up with zoning changes and property transfers, says Morgan. "There was a huge groundswell of anxiety about groundwater and runoff," he says. But a hike in interest rates and the recession of 1990 killed the boom. Says Morgan: "With all of these people buying lots, it turned out to be, ‘Let’s have a party,’ and nobody came."

One person who did come to the party — and stayed — was Dickie Foster. He’s no stranger to the Shore, having begun his construction career as a laborer helping build the Bay Bridge Tunnel in the early 1960s. By the 1980s, he had begun his own firm, BayMark, and was soon putting together planned communities such as West Neck in Virginia Beach. What caught Foster’s eye on the Shore was a large tract of land that spelled big opportunity. In the late 1970s, when the federal government was preparing to auction off leases to oil and natural gas blocks off the Virginia coast, Texas-based heavy construction giant Brown & Root picked up 1,700-acres surrounding the depressed town of Cape Charles near the tip of the peninsula. Brown & Root wanted to use the land to fabricate huge, offshore oil rigs that would be towed out to sea. It had an arrangement with Texaco, which was bidding on offshore leases.

By the 1980s, however, the project went bust when Texaco’s offshore block proved to be a dry hole. Brown & Root scrambled for a way to unload the property, and consultants suggested developing the site as a second home for retirees. In that effort, they fought and won getting their property annexed by the town of Cape Charles to ensure town water and sewer services. Foster got involved in late 1995, but it took him nearly three more years to renew a groundwater permit that had been acquired by Brown & Root but had expired.

Foster is now ready to open next spring, but he admits that he was lucky to have to latched onto Brown & Root’s spadework. Otherwise, it could have taken much longer. The two golf courses are seeded and construction should start on the first phase of housing in coming months. He sees his market being upper-income people from Northern Virginia and points north such as New Jersey, Connecticut and New York, rather than Hampton Roads. Giving testimony to the shortage of Shore contractors, his builders come from Hampton Roads and Charlottesville.

Rather than take a confrontational stance, Foster says he’s tried to take into account the opinions of local Shore residents and the Nature Conservancy from the day he started. He consulted the Audubon Society since the tip of the DelMarVa peninsula is a sensitive birding area and was pleased that he exceeded their requirements.

Another experience made him alter his development plans. "We had rented a helicopter when Nicklaus and Palmer were here, and we kept it an extra day. The pilot took us south, and we flew over Sandbridge and the North Carolina coast. I was so shocked seeing it from the air — so many homes were ready to be washed away. When I got back, I took all of our houses off the water. They may have a water view, but they are off the water now," he says.

Asked his opinions of growth and the lowering of tolls, Foster claims that there are already 32,000 lots in Northampton County alone that are zoned for residences with septic tanks. "Taken together, they are a much bigger threat to the environment than I ever could be," he says. As for the local economy, Foster says his project offers jobs to local people, and lowering the tolls would make it easier for people to commute to jobs in Norfolk or Virginia Beach. Even so, he acknowledges that a local project to have a bus take lower-income workers to jobs in Hampton Roads for a nominal fee was recent cancelled due to poor ridership. But he notes that the Northampton County school system is starting to add vocational training for the building trades. "Before, they had no demand for electricians or carpenters, but they’re teaching that now," he says.

Foster turns the wheel of his Navigator past sand traps. "This is where the clubhouse is going to be," he says. "I just love this place. I am so excited by it." Indeed, Bay Creek may be the biggest residential project the Eastern Shore has ever seen. But it’s not likely there will be many more of them.