SNOW HILL -- Prosperity has been trickling away for decades from this old port town along the Pocomoke River. So when a developer offered to build a community of pretty new houses, many here were ecstatic. Residents voted 584-82 to annex the necessary land, prompting an election night celebration that looked like New Year's Eve.
Two years later, there's no fanfare. The developer says he doesn't have enough money in a sinking economy to build the sewage treatment plant he promised. The town's old plant can't handle a big new development.
But Snow Hill's mayor and tiny business community are undeterred. The Eastern Shore town is considering borrowing several million dollars so it can build the plant. And Ocean City developer Mark Odachowski could start building his homes.
"My hope is that we're able to get a grant to cover about half the cost, borrow the rest and then the developer pays the town back," Mayor Stephen R. Mathews says of the new plan, details of which are being negotiated.
"If anybody thinks we're left holding the bag, they need to realize that it was ours to begin with," the mayor says. "We have to have a new sewage system ... to grow."
Some critics wonder if leaders might be so smitten with the idea of growth that they are about to embark on a foolish course.
"The developer came in like the Pied Piper, everybody followed, and no one could see this economy coming," says Dennis Klingenberg, who fought to push the development issue to referendum in 2006.
Klingenberg, who owns a farm just outside Snow Hill, says that if the town opts to build the sewage plant, residents will be shocked at the cost to them.
"There's no way that water and sewer rates aren't going to go way up," he says.
Snow Hill is one of dozens of small Eastern Shore towns whose purpose was rooted in another century; some are looking to new residential development as a reason to keep going in this one.
In Snow Hill, the tiny port made it a transportation hub where ships and later steamboats came to move goods and passengers. When railroads took over that role after the Civil War, farming came to dominate the local economy.
Today, merchants say the old downtown of brick storefronts, mostly from the late 1800s, could become a shopping and tourist destination. But they say they need the economic boost that new residents would bring to keep businesses going in the three-block district.
Odachowski (who did not respond to requests for comment) charmed the town with a vision for an elaborately planned community called Summerfield. Designed by nationally known architects Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., it is meant to blend 2,000 new houses with the town's Victorian- and Federal-style homes on farmland annexed by Snow Hill.
With the new development, supporters say, the struggling downtown district would blossom as Snow Hill's population of 2,409 doubled. The new homes might be attractive to retirees or people who wanted to commute to jobs in Salisbury, about 20 miles away.
"If Summerfield doesn't happen, I'll probably close my doors in a year," says Ann Coates, an art gallery owner and a former Town Council member who organized downtown merchants to support the annexation. "It would be a tremendous blow."
Other shopkeepers, antique dealers and small retailers in the business district say the downtown has a shot at becoming a shopping destination for tourists and new residents.
"I still think Summerfield will bring new people, so bring 'em on," says Suzanne Timmons, who runs a downtown gift shop.
Timmons and others say Odachowski built enormous good will by moving the headquarters of his heating and disaster-cleanup business here - a boost for downtown, which depends largely on government employees in the Worcester County seat to patronize local lunch spots and small stores.
But Kathy Phillips, who works as a coast watcher, or environmental watchdog for Maryland's coastal bays, says Snow Hill would be better served if the town were less closely tied to Odachowski's project.
"It's a mistake to put all their eggs in one basket," says Phillips. "Now the town is forced to deal with this without their sugar daddy."
The town's discussions with Odachowski involve allowing him to use the current sewage treatment plant to build 300 homes. Meanwhile, Snow Hill would seek a state grant and take out loans to build the new plant necessary for the rest of Summerfield to go up. Town leaders hope that Odachowski could, in several years, give the town the money to cover the cost of the loans.
Suzanne Knudson, who bought a bed-and-breakfast along the Pocomoke with her husband 17 years ago, is a longtime supporter of the Summerfield concept, but she says it would be risky to approve a new deal with Odachowski without requiring a bond.
"For the town to go through with this without a guarantee would be foolish," says Knudson. "Much as we love Mark and Summerfield, the town has to protect itself. Anything could happen."
With development plans disrupted and new homes sitting vacant all over the Shore, some municipal leaders elsewhere are biding their time, waiting until the economic climate seems more favorable.
Cheryl Lewis, a commissioner in the town of Trappe outside Easton, says officials there are willing to wait for the new sewage treatment plant promised by a developer before construction starts on any new houses.
"Way back, five years ago, when we started with our annexation, it was spelled out that the financial responsibility for infrastructure lies with the developer," says Lewis.
Town leaders felt that was critical, she says, especially because "you're talking about something that expensive."
In tiny Millington in northern Kent County, Mayor Dennis P. Hager says his rural village has seen a slowdown in its lone development, but the new neighborhood is at a scale that fits the town's population of about 450. The site was annexed in the 1960s, and about 30 of a planned 50 homes have been built.
"We've seen a slowdown, but we don't think our need to grow is that severe," says Hager. "I wouldn't risk that much debt for our residents."
chris.guy@baltsun.com