What do Hogwarts, Hyrule and the small town of Hiawassee have in common?
Alliteration aside, they all have been enraptured with tales of dragons — often to fiery results.
For the past few weeks, the North Georgia city of Hiawassee — a mountain town best known for tripping up city folk with its name’s pronunciation — has been thrust into the dragon’s den over a homeowner’s plan to erect a towering sculpture of a giant fire-breathing winged lizard on top of Whiskey Mountain.
The 35-foot-tall sculpture made of steel framing and fiberglass is proposed to have wings spanning 160 feet, roughly the width of a football field from sideline to sideline. Mike Parrish, the man behind the dragon, said the sculpture would be visible across much of the tiny town.
“I just want to do something cool,” Parrish said last month during a City Council meeting when first unveiling a 10-foot-wide model of his proposed sculpture. “If you don’t like dragons, I’m sorry... I hope to be a good neighbor to Hiawassee — with my dragon.”
Credit: City of Hiawassee
Credit: City of Hiawassee
Hiawassee — pronounced “Hai-uh-waa-see” — is a city of fewer than 1,300 residents within five miles of the North Carolina border that doesn’t have any zoning codes, which limits the legal tools for those who wanted to defeat the dragon. A petition against the planned sculpture has garnered more than 1,400 signatures. More than 100 residents traveled to City Hall on Monday night to campaign against the sculpture.
Like a cauldron of scalding oil, tensions boiled over, and the meeting devolved into more than an hour of insults, pleas and debate over the limits of personal property rights.
“Why do we have to get involved in your fantasy?” resident Mary Holder asked. “The majority of us don’t want it.”
“It’s an abomination before the Lord,” said Margaret Fineo, who lives in the nearby town of Young Harris.
Mayor Liz Ordiales told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that City Hall was at its capacity of 65 attendees for the first time since she was elected in 2018. Roughly as many people stood outside.
“Personal property rights are a very passionate subject up here,” Ordiales said Tuesday morning. “If it were a squirrel up there rather than a dragon, we would have had the same discussion last night.”
Parrish told the AJC on Wednesday that he reconsidered his plans following the backlash. He said he would not build the dragon to its original scale, if he builds it at all.
“I changed my mind at the meeting after hearing how passionate people were,” Parrish said. “... It would have been something that was probably over the top. I get it — I like the dragon but not everybody does.”
Derek McCarthy, a sculptor commissioned to build the dragon, said he felt the crowd was rude and went too far in disapproving of Parrish’s plans.
“There was no malintent here,” he said. “It’s called art.”
Dreaming of dragons
Parrish has lived in Asheville since the late 1980s and operates fantastical Airbnbs under his Earth & Sky Dwellings company, including treehouses, tents, a “Wizards Hollow” and a starship that’s in development.
He bought the 2-acre property near Whiskey Mountain’s summit in 2008, but the land has remained untouched. Ordiales said Parrish recently obtained a land disturbance permit to build a home.
Credit: City of Hiawassee
Credit: City of Hiawassee
In June, Parrish presented plans for a 1,200-square-foot castle alongside the dragon sculpture. Those plans later morphed into nearly a half-dozen geodesic domes that could be rented out as Airbnbs, according to Macon Hill, whose company TrackRock Builders was hired to help with construction. Parrish said the domes were an idea floated around but not something he planned to build, saying the castle was always his vision.
“I don’t feel like Mike should stop doing his passion or his dream or his fantasy,” Hill said.
He said the dragon model looked “gargoyle-like,” which might have dissuaded some residents or conjured up fears it was evil. Hill said a “happier” version akin to Pete’s Dragon or Puff the Magic Dragon might have been better received.
Credit: Care2 Petitions
Credit: Care2 Petitions
Because Parrish’s property is at an elevation of more than 2,200 feet, he has to obtain a Mountain Act Protection permit to conduct work. The act was passed in 1989 to protect Georgia’s mountains.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources oversees environmental protection in the state, but an agency spokesperson said local jurisdictions are responsible for vetting and issuing Mountain Protection Act permits. Ordiales said Parrish’s permit submission is pending.
Credit: Courtesy Ryan Farmer
Credit: Courtesy Ryan Farmer
Zoning to defend the realm
Zoning is a hot topic in Hiawassee and other small towns, where conservative residents typically push back on government regulation and approval. John Clemens, president of the Towns County Civic Association, spoke at Monday’s meeting and pleaded for the city and county, which also don’t have zoning codes, to revisit the laws and establish more stringent rules.
“There’s nothing to stop us from putting a strip joint there 24 hours a day, because there’s no ordinance to stop it,” Clemens said.
Victoria Berry, a resident who started the petition against the sculpture, said a manmade monument of this size would overtake the town and make the remote city a sideshow attraction.
“I don’t care if it’s a dinosaur. I don’t care if it’s Fred Flintstone,” she said. “I don’t want to look at a giant sculpture detracting from our mountain’s scenic beauty.”
Despite the dragon’s demise, Parrish said he still expects to move to Hiawassee permanently once he retires and hopes to mend fences with his scorned neighbors.
“With that end in sight, I just want to be living in a small town and drinking lemonade on my front porch,” he said.
Maybe a front drawbridge would be more fitting.
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