The Best of Florida’s 30A Now Available in East Texas at High Hill Farm

• A Fresh New Vacation Home Community Less Than Two Hours From Dallas

Real Estate often makes for best friends. For instance, Sharon Romano was getting a manicure in a Lake Highlands salon, which was about five minutes from her home. Another customer noticed the sticker on her car: a black and white “30A” sticker. The customer, Melanie Lipscomb, approached Sharon as she left the salon — “Hey,” she asked, “Is that sticker for ’30A,’ like the highway in south Walton County on Florida’s panhandle?”

It was, indeed. Sharon and her developer husband, Jason, had honeymooned on 30A in South Walton on Florida’s Emerald Panhandle coast, home to some of the world’s most beautiful beaches. From the first visit, they were smitten and returned as often as they could. The Panhandle was still a real estate sleeper, so Sharon had actually made her own 30A stickers!

As it turns out, the Lipscombs were also 30A fans. Though this moment became the start of a great friendship — the two couples had children of the same age and shared interests — it also became the dawning nucleus of new development in the rolling hills of East Texas, far enough away from the 24/7 pulse of DFW, but closer and more accessible than the Panhandle of Florida.

It is called High Hill.

Like Nowhere Else in Texas

High Hill Development is on land unlike any in Texas. There is a unique intersection of geography coming off the plains of the DFW Metroplex where High Hill Farm is located. It’s at the cusp of the Piney Woods and the Post Oak Belt of the Gulf Coastal Plains. The topography is softly rolling hills, abundant grasses and trees, and the rare quality (in these realms) of abundant water.

This is where Sharon and Jason Romano decided to not just build their family home, but create a 30A-like haven for other families to enjoy.

“We had gone to 30A for years, for our honeymoon, and every year thereafter,” says Sharon, an international travel and event planner. “We were blown away to find this part of the country open, unspoiled, and every bit as breathtaking as California’s river valley and northern Italy. We enjoyed visiting Seaside in Florida, but with growing kids, busy lives, and commitments, it was harder and harder to get there.”

So, based on research and their own experiences, Sharon and Jason Romano have built their own version of the Florida panhandle in Texas — on 75 acres at High Hill Farm. And they are now ready to share their vision with others.

In early 2012, the Romanos’ daughter was competing in dressage, and the family went to a horse show at Texas Rose Horse Park in West Tyler.

“We immediately fell in love with the topography of the land,” says Jason. “We decided to look for land and stumbled upon High Hill completely by accident. It had been on the market for six years. In fact, there was an old real estate sign with one of those “info tubes” with one sheet featuring the info on the land. It was hand-drawn, copied, and faded. I loved the location immediately.”

Jason especially loved that there were only three turns from Interstate 20, with no obscure directions to find the destination. They signed on the dotted, and the future of the High Hill Farm vision was secured.

High Hill Farm in Arp, Texas, about 20 miles southeast of Tyler, was the first phase of the High Hill Development initiative. Immediately the Romanos ran the farm as a luxury East Texas retreat with locally sourced, farm-fresh food and an immersive nature experience.

With Jason’s builder background, beautiful designer bungalows were constructed and outfitted with luxury furnishings and linens. Later, a “party barn” was added with open spaces for bigger gatherings and more private, luxury-appointed rooms. Outside are myriad activities — hiking on forested trails, nature walks, fall foliage, spring blooms, vineyard tasting, outdoor yoga, a resort pool, outdoor fireplaces, firepits, and gourmet food. High Hill quickly became East Texas’s gourmet central.

As Texas Monthly put it:

The pool, set into an emerald lawn, and the vineyard, with its sloping rows of black Spanish grapes, could be direct imports from Napa’s sophisticated Carneros Inn, while the Napoleon Bar pays homage to the Romanos’ favorite New Orleans watering hole. At their 48-seat restaurant, Côte, the chef serves locally sourced, Southern-by-way-of-France feasts. 

Texas Monthly 9/15

Next, they moved both their families to the farm lock, stock and barrel. There was also a strategic and phased business plan to create a New Urbanism planned community, which required the purchase of additional acres. Like its Seaside, WaterColor, Rosemary, and Alys Beach prototypes, High Hill Development will be completely walkable, as car-free as possible, feature a small community village of stores and eateries, a beach, pool, beach club, outdoor entertainment pavilion, golf course, hiking trails, and endless water activities.

But unlike the communities of 30A, High Hill Farm is less than a 2-hour drive from Dallas-Fort Worth!

A Sustainable, Walkable Community of Nature in East Texas

From the first moment, Jason Romano saw 75 prime acres overgrown with hardwoods nestled in the Piney Woods of East Texas, a revelation began budding in his developer mind that just wouldn’t cease. For years the Dallas-based homebuilder had been mulling an environment where families could retreat to the safety and beauty of Mother Nature as an everyday experience. Nature would be a playground for living, where children would be as free-range as the fowl, where everyone in the family could experience and immerse themselves in the simple beauty of the land much as they did years ago on the prairie before electronics and social media put everyone in front of a device.

The place appeared to be in the middle of nowhere, with peacefully quiet skies loaded with chirping birds rather than helicopters and sirens. It is precisely the environment the new work-from-home generations covet, proven by recent population changes in the state’s four core counties: Dallas, Harris, Travis, and Bexar lost 6,000 people collectively while the neighboring suburbs added 260,000, in a single year.

It was just what Romano wanted back in 2013.

“I grew up in this very environment, where people were more connected, where kids could be kids and roam from sun up to sunset, no agenda or schedule, just come home for dinner when the dinner bell rang,” says Jason. “No one worried about safety or crosswalks. It’s very much what life was once like on farms and ranches, part of the heritage of Texas.”

It is what life is every day at High Hill Farm.

“People are seeking the sort of visual peace and physical comfort derived from a connection to the outdoors — to trees, land, plants, nature, water — and this leads to greater fulfillment, more connectedness with family, and more satisfaction in work and daily life and leisure activities,” says Romano. “The pandemic changed many things. This is more important now than ever.”

Relax and reconnect: for years, that is exactly what guests of High Hill Farm would do during weekend visits or retreats. Then they would pack up and return to the frenzy of city life with traffic, noise, and pollution.

Now, says Romano, there is no need to ever return to chaos. Change your lifestyle for the rest of your life by buying a home in paradise. High Hill Development is beginning its long-awaited first phase of private residential construction luxury vacation homes, fully furnished, at prices below $1 million.

A Better Way of Second Homeownership

Think of a village of people connected by trees and water. Think of a town center with a casual burger place, a barista, a sundries shop, an art gallery with painting classes, a winery and wine tastings, a post office, and a bakery, fine dining around the corner: those are all the basics any village needs, and those are exactly the shops Romano will include in his first High Hill Town Square bordering the new spring water-fed lake and pool. With an outdoor entertainment pavilion at one end for weekly concerts and live performances, he will add in something other New Urban communities do not have: a beautiful New Urban-designed chapel.

Think of being able to get to all of this from your home, on foot by bicycle.

Fancy golf? Hop in the car with your clubs. High Hill owns a charming golf course in nearby Overton, complete with a clubhouse.

Finally, 110 stunning home sites are now available to purchase and build in the Piney Woods of East Texas, with five custom house plans that will be turned over, completely furnished, to homeowners starting at $750,000. All homes will be designed with the clean-lined, 30A-inspired architectural designs of traditional metal-roofed beach homes with wide porches and water features. Condominiums will be built in the same style, and all properties will be available for rent through vacation home rental websites that will include tracking bookings, rentals, cleaning, and payments in real-time, adding another dimension of passive income for all owners.

“The completion of High Hill Development’s master-planned community offers a unique opportunity for vacation home ownership, mindful of the way people want to experience second homeownership, with access to nature and community, in a geographical region that is spectacularly beautiful and idyllic,” says Romano, who has lived at High Hill now for seven years. “While it looks and feels remote, the location offers every possible amenity, plus accessibility to primary business, medical and travel hubs.”

The Romanos have seen their dreams of raising a family on the farm come to fruition. Now High Hill Farm is a place you can enjoy for a meal, a weekend, or to call home for a lifetime.

High Hill Farm Development is marketed by Dallas-based @Properties. Agents and prospective buyers are invited to a High Hill VIP Development Tour Saturday, April 9, from noon to 4 p.m. Children — and dogs! — are welcome.

Come get a taste of simpler country life in its purest form … you just may decide to stay.