INDIAN LAKE — Terry St. Clair should know about the housing crisis.

His St. Clair Construction & Excavating has continued to build luxury townhouses even as the economy struggled.

“Sales are off, but prices aren’t,” Claar said.

“People still are coming, but they’re not breaking down your door like they used to,” he said while showing journalists around his Kickapoo Lakeside Townhouses. They list for $359,000 to $389,000 each.

They’re part of St. Clair’s overall scheme for $10 million worth of development in the borough in the years immediately ahead. His vision calls for six townhouse complexes with two or four units apiece as well as three lakeside single-family homes.

One of the four-unit townhouses is completed and sold, and St. Clair is selling units in the second townhouse next door.

That building should be finished within a few months.

“I don’t get overextended,” said St. Clair, who built his business constructing homes in Menoher Heights. “I build as the townhouses sell.”

All have outsized windows with spectacular views of the water. Shower and Jacuzzi-bathtub fixtures may be of oil-rubbed bronze. Granite countertops. Fireplaces.

Outside, homes must be set back 100 feet from the lakeshore, giving the lake a more natural feel. The preferred mode of travel: Golf carts.

The vast majority of the 500-odd residences in the borough are second homes, and the borough practically empties during the winter. Buyers include movers and shakers from Maryland and Washington who just can’t believe the “bargain basement” prices.

Before St. Clair sold a place to an out-of-state woman for hundreds of thousands of dollars, she looked at the list price and wanted to know, “What’s wrong with it?”

They’re attracted to the quieter pace at the tony private lake, in not having to deal with the hustle/bustle at Deep Creek or Raystown lakes.

A maximum of 1,500 boat licenses can be issued.

It’s for that very reason that a handful of upper-crust residents are against St. Clair’s complex – or any other development. They want to keep things intimate – even if taxes have to go up to do it.

They’ve even taken St. Clair to court to stop the bulldozers.

Borough Council President Michael Miscoe, though, is in St. Clair’s corner. He said St. Clair’s new development, along with prior holdings including the lodge and condos, will generate

$1 million in taxes over the next 20 years.

That’s not small change, even at Indian Lake.

The borough is in the midst of a $7 million fix to its dam, as ordered by the state. The work includes reducing the grade of the dam, and the lake now has been drawn down 30 feet.

“We should be thanking him, not beating him up,” Miscoe said.

“Residents generally care about their taxes; some don’t. I’m not one of them, and there’s a whole lot of folks out here that don’t fit into that category either,” he said.

St. Clair – who moved to the borough with his wife, Patti in 1993 – was himself a council member for 10 years. He said of his opponents, “Their attitude is, ‘Raise taxes as high as you have to, but don’t bring in more people.’ ”

“There are some people who don’t want to see anyone else come into the borough,” Miscoe said. “If that attitude had persisted in the ’70s when my parents moved here, there wouldn’t be anybody out here.”

Besides, he said, the borough doesn’t permit exclusionary zoning.

Miscoe said tax increases that he himself voted for have been painful and cost him hundreds of dollars a year, not including higher school levies.

“The majority of Borough Council has consistently supported development,” Miscoe said.

“That’s because it’s low-density.”

One-acre lots are typical.

He acknowledged that development opponents have been troublesome.

“You don’t have to be many when you’re loud and have lots of money,” Miscoe said.

A recent study showed that eight to 12 new homes have to go up every year to get tax rates under control.