Family tradition.

• Position: NC TREND: Western Region - Rental housing reports

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World history may be doomed to repeat itself, and family histories are no exception. Case in point: When George Cecil and his son, Jack, decided Biltmore Park, their Buncombe County residential development started in 1990, needed an urban town center, they toured Market Square in Lake Forest, 111., Country Club Plaza in Kansas City and Disney's Celebration Town Center in Florida. In the end, the duo behind Asheville-based Biltmore Farms concluded their best option was aping Biltmore Village, the 19th-century commercial and social center that George's grandfather, George Vanderbilt, constructed at the base of his massive Biltmore Estate.

The new project started in 2006, when Biltmore Farms secured $200 million in financing to build Biltmore Park Town Square, the largest private development project in western North Carolina with nearly 600,000 square feet of retail and office space, plus 200 apartments and condos. The "doom" arrived two years later when the U.S. economy cratered. "We were just starting to turn dirt here," says George, 91. "It was a question of: Do we stop now or are we going to--I hate to use the phrase 'take a gamble'--but are we going to move forward?"

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Biltmore Farms started as a dairy operation within the...