REAL ESTATE
Changes afoot at Swannanoa mansion on Afton Mountain after series of deaths
112-year-old country house is an 'uncut gem' ready for a transformation

Hawes Spencer Aug 27, 2024

Stu Rifkin remembers hitting the links at the Swannanoa Golf and Country Club, which straddled the rolling peaks of Afton Mountain, and thinking about what those 236 acres could become. Those memories came rushing back to him this past winter when the property was listed for sale. ... “It’s an uncut gem,” Rifkin told The Daily Progress. “The views up there are spectacular.”

Real-estate
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With golf falling in popularity across America and three generations of the course’s owners dying within a few years, redeveloping a tract near two major highways and one national park seemed obvious. Adding to the chance of change, Rifkin thought, was another death-induced ownership shift. Until he died last summer, James “Phil” Dulaney controlled the adjacent 600-acre tract featuring the original Swannanoa, a 1912-era Italian Renaissance revival mansion whose scale, materials and workmanship rival those of the famed “summer cottages” of Newport, Rhode Island.


Swannanoa, the Italian Renaissance revival villa built in 1912 by Richmond industrialist James Dooley on the border of Nelson and Augusta counties, is seen on Sunday, June 23, 2024.
CAL TOBIAS, THE DAILY PROGRESS

“You could turn the mansion into a wedding venue with rooms you can stay in,” said Rifkin. ... But as he started mulling over the mansion’s deferred maintenance backlog and the sheer size of the combined tracts spanning Augusta and Nelson counties, Rifkin, who works in real estate, said he realized that a redevelopment would require more capital than most developers could muster. ... “It’s a job for Paul Manning, or a consortium of Paul Manning, Hunter Craig, and Jaffray Woodriff,” he said, listing of a who’s who of Central Virginia real estate investors.

As it turns out, the people now in charge of the mansion and its surrounding tracts, the officers and shareholders of the Dulaney family firm Skyline Swannanoa Inc., have similar thoughts. ... “We are looking to find an appropriate development partner,” company secretary William Hurd told The Daily Progress. ... Hurd may be best known as the lawyer who, two decades ago at the U.S. Supreme Court, saved Virginia’s statute banning cross-burning, designed to rid the commonwealth of the Ku Klux Klan. More recently, his advocacy at Virginia Supreme Court helped save Sweet Briar College after its board of directors announced plans to close the school due to “insurmountable financial challenges.” And now Hurd, by virtue of his marriage, finds himself with a seat at one of Virginia’s most storied tables and the chance to save a moldering mansion.

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The Italianate water tower at the Swannanoa estate is covered in vines, Sunday, June 23, 2024, on Afton Mountain.
CAL TOBIAS, THE DAILY PROGRESS

A stately home in a poor state

Phil Dulaney’s widow, Sandi, will turn 77 soon. A librarian by profession, she spent several decades in medical and science libraries at the University of Virginia. But when her husband’s illnesses intensified in the years leading up to his July 2023 death, she took the reins of Swannanoa and now seems to relish her role as chatelaine.

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Sandi Dulaney poses for a portrait in front of an original Tiffany stained-glass window depicting Sallie Dooley, wife of Richmond industrialist James Dooley, Sunday, June 23, 2024, inside Swannanoa, the former Dooley country house on the border of Nelson and Augusta counties.
CAL TOBIAS photos, THE DAILY PROGRESS

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What was once the Inn at Afton is seen on Sunday, June 2, 2024, atop Afton Mountain.
CAL TOBIAS, THE DAILY PROGRESS

Hawes Spencer (434) 960-9343 hspencer@dailyprogress.com @HawesSpencer on X