Thousands of visitors come to Virginia every year to tour the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. As they soak in the natural beauty where the two meet off Interstate 64 at Rockfish Gap, with views stretching out across the Shenandoah Valley, they soak in something else less appealing, although breathtaking in its own way: a blighted landscape of derelict buildings, including an abandoned orange-roofed Howard Johnson’s, a boarded-up gas station and a graffitied motel with trees growing through holes in the roof. It wasn’t always like that. Area natives remember when Rockfish Gap was the place to be in the ’50s and ’60s, drawing both locals and tourists. Under the stewardship of James F. “Phil” Dulaney Jr., who inherited some of the most prime commercial real estate around, as well as Swannanoa Palace, a national historic landmark just down the road to the south, the property has steadily declined and prompted citizens’ calls for eminent domain in 2012 to salvage the “disgrace” on Afton Mountain. It’s not entirely unprecedented—the Shenandoah National Park itself was the result of wholesale, often-resisted eminent domain. Outrage over the condition of those properties is widespread. A Facebook group called Saving Afton Mountain has over 1,700 members. Dulaney isn’t the only one whose blighted properties dot the landscape, with the shell of the Landmark Hotel on the Downtown Mall being one of the most prominent examples. At the intersection of Routes 250 and 240 in Crozet, the gutted structure that was going to be Café No Problem has greeted (or perhaps more accurately, visually assaulted) travelers and locals for 20 years. But unlike those, Dulaney’s properties didn’t fall into disrepair from aborted construction. They were thriving businesses when he took control 43 years ago, and consistently have suffered from a history of neglect—although Dulaney would dispute that. In a recent phone interview, Dulaney reminded that what some consider the gateway to the Shenandoah Valley is in fact private property and he can do what he wants with it. And for years, Dulaney, who’s in his early 60s, has beat a consistent refrain: He’s got plans and he’s working on it.