Preserving the Former Bassett Country Club for Community Use

This property is located at the Gateway to Henry County and to its cities of Martinsville, Bassett, and Stanleytown.

Also, this property is adjacent to the Fairystone parkway, a prominent thoroughfare traveled by thousands of people monthly.

For nearly a century, this property has been used for recreational use by area residents.

However, sixty months ago, the property—roughly forty acres—was purchased by the Lester Corporation.

Soon thereafter, this firm leased the former Bassett County Club to a solar farm enterprise.

The lease allows the solar farm enterprise to cover 35 acres with solar panels for 40 years

Henry Cares is—

Attempting to persuade Lester Corporation to move its tenant and its rental lease from the heavily treed, former Bassett Country Club golf course to the county-owned and maintained landfill.

The landfill, roughly fifty acres, is devoid of trees; ready for solar panel placement, and is not visible to the public

To make this transfer possible, Henry Cares also—

Seeks to persuade the county to lease to the Lester Corporation its landfill at no cost in exchange for Lester Corporation leasing to the county, also at no cost, its Bassett Country Club property.

If we are successful, all parties benefit:

• • the Lester Corporation can acquire potentially more rent by facilitating the relocation of its power-generating rent-paying tenant onto more land that is maintained at county expense
  • the solar enterprise can create potentially greater revenue by placing more solar panels atop concrete pads on more acreage
  • the county receives a key parcel of property at the Gateway to Henry County for a to be determined future community use
  • the millions of residents, visitors, truckers and tourists traveling HW 220 and the Fairystone Parkway for the next 40 years will not be visually insulted by acres of ugly solar panels currently scheduled to be placed across the street from the Stanleytown elementary school

The Appalachian Power Company  affirmed that its infrastructure, namely a nearby switching station and power lines on Kings Highway, would effortlessly accommodate the Lester Corporation tenant’s solar generating enterprise were it to relocate to the county landfill.

To date, the Lester Corporation inexplicably refuses to offer its tenant the relocation option, an option which would benefit its tenant and simultaneously preserve the former Bassett Country Club with irrigated visually appealing open space replete with venerable trees as a site for future community recreational use.

Henry Cares, however, will keep trying to persuade the Lester Corporation to sustain its century-plus respect and support of the residents of Henry County—and to our visitors and prospective new residents and corporate investors—by moving the visual blight its tenant’s solar panels will cause to a site where they will be unseen.

If you have any suggestions on how we can persuade Lester Corporation to keep visually alluring its forty-acre former golf course located at the Gateway to Henry County, then please do not hesitate to send them to us.