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courtesy of greenhouseplace.com

The site of Greenhouse Road Place

Each one involves adding something to the greater Lexington area that Nay believes fills a need in the community. Nay seems committed to a project that will give back to the community that he says “was so attractive and so willing to receive a new person” when he moved to Lexington 30 years ago.

Since then, he’s recognized the importance of being a good citizen when doing his work. He was the main developer of several medical buildings located near Stonewall Jackson Hospital, and he still feels giving back is important today. “If you live in the same town as you do business,” he said, “you want to do it right.”

This won’t be Nay’s first foray into working to improve the area. As a member of the Rotary Club in the '80s, he was directly involved with the creation of the Rockbridge Community Festival. At about the same time, he served for four years on the Lexington City Council. Nay cited this ability to “participate in the community on so many levels” as the main reason he enjoys working to better the community.

He said his ideas for the development of the land reflect his commitment to improve Lexington.

One scenario, according to Nay, involves constructing affordable housing--either small homes or clustered town-home style houses--on the property. He believes that there is a scarcity of truly affordable housing in the area and believes that these types of homes could help solve that problem.

Nay also said he has had several inquires about using the land for a different residential purpose--a retirement community for both ambulatory patients and those in need of entry--level medical care. He said the idea is to create something “similar to Kendal but more affordable.”

For any kind of living quarters to be constructed there, however, the land would have to be rezoned for residential use. The current zoning status does not allow for living quarters to be built on the site.

As it is, the land consists of a rolling pasture that is pleasing to look at and adds scenery to the area, and Nay said he plans to keep it that way, regardless of how it is developed. He uses a word, “viewshed,” that compares the importance of a scenic view to land to the importance of water to a watershed. “[I’m] very concerned about [maintaining] the viewshed, both from the property and looking at the property,” he said.

Nay said his dream for the 30-acre plot is to have an alum of either of the Lexington colleges return to the area and construct an industrial think-tank there. He said he would like the on-site office to be used for developing product prototypes, and he suggested that the industrial work--the machining and manufacturing of the business--could be located in the industrial park in Buena Vista.

In this scenario, Nay envisions building what is called an “English basement,” or “bank barn,” where the parking lot is built first and then the building goes over top of it. This way, the cars aren’t visible from the outside and the area maintains its visual integrity. “The terrain lends itself well [to this type of construction],” Nay said.

One other idea that Nay has considered is using the land for a county government park. He even mentioned possibly trying to get the county to consider locating the courthouse there, if there is a move in the cards, so that prisoners could be tunneled from the jail next door to their trial venue.

Major J.M. Higgins, the jail’s superintendent, wouldn’t comment on the idea of putting the courthouse next to the jail for easy prisoner transportation except for saying, “I know that they’ve used this with some success in other places.”

According to Harvey Hotinger of the county Board of Supervisors, there are no plans to build government buildings on that site. However, he did mention a study that is being conducted to see whether the county should expand the crowded jail onto that land, a concept Nay called “a swell idea.”

For now, Nay is simply waiting for the right opportunity--or the right offer--to come along. And although he’d like to see the industrial office idea work out, Nay said he is simply looking forward to doing something good for the Lexington area.

Initially, Nay was approached with an offer to have the land used for storage purposes, but he refused to sell. Although it would have been an easy way to cash in on his prime real estate, Nay simply didn’t agree with the plan. “It didn’t fit what we needed in the community,” Nay said.