Now the estimated $1 billion commercial-residential venture planned for Surgarloaf for the past nine years may evaporate because the developers still aren't ready to turn the first spade.

The project's owners, the Price family and former banker Willoughby T. Cox Jr., are fighting to get a five-year extension on a mandatory state order for a Dec. 18 ground-breaking. Without the extension, the developers say they will have no other options but to walk away from the project for good.

That would satisfy area residents and environmentalists who have fought the enterprise since it was announced in 1991. They argue the planned 2,434 home development with two golf courses and 120,000 sf of commercial space is in the wrong place at the wrong time.