HOPKINTON — Lobster traps pile beside the raised single-story, wooden house.

To the left, a dirt road leads to a commercial auto garage, long closed, where more lobster traps mount up high.

The saltwater scent lingers on the air — as if carried by the wind some 10 miles inland — even though it’s been weeks since the traps have last seen the ocean.

Up on the deck, Gary Wilcox, wearing blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up just over the elbow, talks about how he built the garage, one cinder block at a time.

He was only 24 at the time.

The house came later, the 55-year-old lobsterman says, a project that took years.

Born and raised in Hopkinton, Wilcox speaks in rich, deep tones. As is the custom in the area, he draws out his vowels and shortens his speech — for those he doesn’t yet know.

Looking around, he notes that most of the land surrounding his 4.8-acre homestead belonged to his family, the Palmers, after whom the Y-shaped road is named — Palmer Circle.

The Lindhbrook Golf Course and the Sweet Valley Estates were part of his great-grandfather’s farmstead; his grandmother’s expanse included much of the land around his house. The large white house next door to Wilcox, now owned by Roy Dubs, was the house where his mother’s family grew up and where for years they celebrated Christmas.

Less than a mile away on Woodville Alton Road, some of his relatives are buried in what is now a state historical cemetery.

Now, his land stands in the middle of a development proposal that would include a hotel and the state’s first facility built specifically to be a full-scale film studio.

Wilcox says he takes it in stride.

He’s been here before.

BACK IN THE 1990s, it was Brae Bern, a proposed resort development that envisioned building a 200-room hotel, a conference center, 165 houses and an 18-hole golf course along with a sewage-treatment plant, water system and helicopter pad on some of the same land off Exit 2 on Route 95.

Wilcox’s property then was also smack in the middle — with the proposed hotel to one side and the convention center to the other. But he refused to sell.

This time, he’s left the door ajar.

Backers of the Brae Bern project heralded it at the time as an alternative to upscale facilities in Newport and Providence.

“We’re going to create a destination community like Myrtle Beach [S.C.] in South County,” Hal Henry, one of the developers, said in 1990 when the council approved the project. “People can buy a second home or retire there.”

By December 1995, the Brae Bern limited partnership, led by Henry — “the local hero of the day,” as Wilcox refers to him — filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code, listing assets under $50,000 and debts between $500,000 and $900,000.

THIS TIME, Harold Katersky, chairman of Pacifica Ventures, based in Santa Monica, Calif., has come to town.

Katersky, along with town and state officials, announced the latest development proposal with much fanfare last month at a State House news conference.

The announcement followed months of backstage negotiations during which Katersky and his partners brokered an initial agreement with the state over a tax credit — the bill would have to be approved by the legislature — and bought options on some 263 acres on both sides of Woodville Alton Road, including land owned by Wilcox’s cousin just across the street from him.

Wilcox didn’t sell. And so, the partners propose to build around him.

A security fence would wrap around the film studio, replacing the uneven stone walls that now delineate the lot lines and effectively severing Wilcox from his new neighbors.

From his porch, Wilcox would see the proposed sanitary leach field, which the developer wants to place on the site closest to his house and across the street from the Lindhbrook Green condominium complex.

Farther away, and possibly partially shielded by his own trees, would rise the approximately 45-foot-high sound stages and parking.

A map of the proposed development shows Wilcox’s property sticking out as a finger of land jabbing into the development.

The developer proposes turning Palmer Circle — a town-owned road — into a dead-end street at both ends. A new road would be created to carry traffic to the development.

Still, Wilcox says, he doesn’t mind the film studio all that much. It’s the hotel and traffic that trouble him.

He also worries about the potential environmental impact on the area, given the lack of public water and sewers, a concern shared by other area residents and the Narragansett Indian tribe.

BEFORE Hopkinton and Katersky, there was Quonset Point and Ron Lynch, a former associate of Katersky’s at Culver Studios in Los Angeles. When Quonset Point didn’t pan out as a film studio — because Lynch was unable to find enough contiguous undeveloped land at the former Naval air station and became concerned about the distance from Providence — Fred Hashway, director of intergovernmental relations for the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation, called Anthony DelVicario, a developer who was already looking at land along the Route 95 corridor.

DelVicario, who later joined with Ralph Palumbo under Halden Acquisition Group, based in Providence, said he grew leery of the project’s scale, which included a residential and commercial component, and whether there would be enough financing. “It was a very overstated plan,” Palumbo said.

“We became concerned that Mr. Lynch didn’t have the financial wherewithal to make a deal of this magnitude,” said Frank McMahon, chief lobbyist for the new proprosal in Hopkinton.

Lynch walked away. But during the initial discussions, McMahon said, Lynch had mentioned Katersky’s new studio in Albuquerque, N.M., as an example of a successful free-standing studio.

With Lynch gone, the Rhode Island trio turned to Katersky, flying to Albuquerque last summer and signing a letter of intent in September.

BACK IN RHODE ISLAND, Palumbo and DelVicario set their sights for the studio on some 250 acres along Route 102 off Exit 5 in West Greenwich.

West Greenwich Town Manager Kevin Breene (also a state senator) and the town planner, Jennifer Paquet, discussed the film studio proposal with DelVicario, presented it to the council informally, but ultimately said no.

“We just felt that we weren’t ready for that,” Breene said.

So, Breene suggested the developers go to Hopkinton, knowing that the town was trying to develop its Route 95 exits.

That was about a year ago.

Much of the legwork to secure the land fell to DelVicario and Georgia Ure, a local real estate broker.

It is unclear when and which town and state officials became involved.

McMahon said they first contacted Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy sometime last spring, and later in the summer spoke with Town Council President Vincenzo Cordone. On Oct. 9, they met with House Speaker William J. Murphy to present the idea and the site, McMahon said.

The initial map released at the Feb. 7 news conference included at least three residential properties that are not under option. A revised map eliminates those lots.

The developers say the map is only conceptual and will continue to be revised before plans are filed — in late May or early June, subject to the state approving the tax credit.

GIVEN THE FATE of previous proposals for the land, Wilcox says he reserves judgment on the film studio plan. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Still, he said, “What are you going to do? If it’s their land, it’s their land.”

Looking out from his deck, he said, “This is my home. I built it by hand.

“And these people come, and they think…,” he said, pausing briefly. “It’s just a house to them.”

marmenta@projo.com