New Private Club Proposed For Valero Property Off Old South Road

A new private membership club is being proposed for the Valero property off Old South Road that would feature an equestrian program, regenerative agriculture, a greenhouse and gardens, swimming, and racquet sports.

Alan Worden, the co-developer of the Westmoor Club on Nantucket, has struck a deal with the Valeros for a long-term lease of 10.5 acres of the family's 12-acre property at 64 Old South Road to develop what will be called "The Hensdale Club," a nod to the farm that occupied the site in 1869. The Valeros will retain ownership of the entire parcel, as well as control of a 1.5-acre portion of the property, and plan to continue operating the garden center until construction begins, Worden said. 

"We've spent years thinking about how to keep this land in our family for the next generation," Gale Valero said in a statement shared with the Current. "We don't want to sell it, and we don't want to see it significantly developed. The ground lease and the club concept let us hold onto ownership while giving the land the kind of active care it deserves. This is our home — we don't intend to retire and leave the Island. Horses have been on this land in our family for decades, and the club's plan is to grow that program, expand the gardens and pasture around it, and build a working greenhouse at the heart of the property. We hope the project can demonstrate opportunities to use land gently."

The club is currently being designed, and permitting is expected to begin in late summer with a submission to the Planning Board for its September meeting. Worden had preliminary conversations with town officials about the development this week, including meetings with the Planning & Land Use Development office. The property, which abuts Nantucket Land Bank parcels and the Naushop neighborhood to the east, is located in a commercial neighborhood (CN) zoning area, where a club is a permitted use, and Worden's team will seek a special permit from the Planning Board to proceed with the development.

In a conversation with the Current this week, Worden outlined several aspects of the proposed club, emphasizing that the majority of the parcel will be retained as open space in a "regenerative" landscape. The entity that will hold the lease is known as Scout Island Club LLC, and Worden has hired a team that includes the renowned architectural firm Workshop/APD.

"We're thrilled to steward this land," Worden said. "It's been a working property for 40 years; we're thinking about how it'll serve future generations. The landscape will be regenerative. The energy systems are designed so that, over time, the systems can produce as much energy as we use. We hope it can stand as a demonstration of what sustainable development on Nantucket can look like."

Beyond the desire to create a place where families can connect during the summer season on Nantucket, Worden said another factor that led to the proposal was the fact that the island's existing private clubs - the Nantucket Yacht Club, Great Harbor Yacht Club, The Westmoor Club, Nantucket Golf Club, and the Sankaty Head Golf Club - are all full.

"The existing clubs are full, and many families — including legacies — can't get back into the clubs they grew up in," Worden said. "That's the demand we heard, and that's what we're trying to answer."

"I had the opportunity to review very conceptual plans with Alan Warden earlier this week," said Nantucket Planning & Land Use Services director Leslie Woodson Snell. "A club is a use that is allowed by right in the Commercial Neighborhood (CN) zoning district, however, the scale that we discussed would require the issuance of a Major Commercial Development (MCD) special permit from the Planning Board. An application for an MCD would include requests within the same application for any other proposed uses in connection with the club that require a special permit and any waivers from the Zoning Bylaw that require relief by special permit. The Planning Board would be required to hold a public hearing to discuss the application."

A portion of the club will focus on active food production, including an 8,000-square-foot greenhouse, a 10,000- to 12,000-square-foot regenerative market garden, and 2,000 square feet of orchards. Worden said that 100 percent of the off-season (October through April) greenhouse production would be made available for donations to the island community, which he projected would be 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of produce annually.

Part of the open space would be a so-called "bio-pond," which Worden describes as a multifunctional ecological asset that will provide stormwater retention, "plant-filtered swimming," and a closed-loop geothermal heat exchange.

Included in the 1.5 acres of the property that the Valeros will retain control of, and is not part of the lease to the new club, is a plan for the Valero Gym, which was previously permitted. Nicholas Valero said that construction of the Valero Gym will begin soon. The project was temporarily placed on hold while the overall planning and layout of the property were developed. With that process now underway, Nicholas Valero confirmed that preparations for the gym are moving ahead.

Worden acknowledged the obvious concerns about adding additional traffic to one of Nantucket's most congested roadways. The club plans to hire approximately 150 seasonal employees and to develop a significant number of on-site employee housing units that would be capable of accommodating nearly all of those seasonal staff members. He also emphasized that the proposed club would be among the least intensive potential uses of the property.

"So we're going to meet with Mike Burns, (the town's) transportation planner, and we're going to do a traffic study," Worden said. "What I would say, from the kind of big picture perspective, is when you drive by the island's clubs, whether it's Nantucke Golf Club or even Great Harbor, which is kind of at a little bit of a chokepoint, or the Westmoor, any of the clubs, there is not a big traffic jam. Why is that? Well, first of all, if you say there are 580 members, what we know is only about 60 percent of families are on-island at any one point. It is still a little bit like there's the July crowd, the August crowd, and the whole summer crowd, so they're not all there at the same time. So I think of it as 300 families, not 580 families. And then the use pattern really varies. You might be a 6 a.m. workout guy, another might be 9 a.m., I may be showing up for co-working or for lunch, and then maybe we all meet for dinner. So the use is just sort of trickling throughout the day. It isn't like everyone's got to get there to start work at night. So it's 10 acres, which is zoned CN, it could be a lot of things, and so short of it being preserved forever as nothing, we think this use is the lightest use in terms of traffic."

Snell confirmed part of her conversation with Worden about the proposed club development centered on the Old South Road parking concerns.

"Additional traffic to Old South Road is, of course, a concern, and we discussed preparation of a traffic study by their consultant to be submitted to the Planning Board and peer reviewed by a team selected by the Planning Board," Snell said. "The site has significant development potential and understanding the difference between what is proposed versus what may possible under other development scenarios will be important for the Board to consider."

For the anticipated 580 members of the Hensdale Club, the planned amenities include:

• A clubhouse with dining, function rooms, co-working space, and 10 guest rooms
• A four-season greenhouse
• A general store with produce, prepared food, & gardening supplies
• Bike shop
• Kids club
• Wellness & Longevity Center with diagnostics, strength training, recovery areas, classes
• Barn with paddock and up to 10 horses
• Approximately 10 club cottages (not exceeding 15,000 sf of ground coverage)
• Adult and family pools
• Racquets including padel, pickleball, and tennis
• Golf performance center

Worden said the club intends to create a community fellowship program, offering 10 no-cost, three-year memberships to senior leaders of Nantucket nonprofits and
public-sector institutions. The fellows would participate in structured “Island Conversations” on opportunities and challenges facing Nantucket and serve as informal advisors to the club's leadership in their fields of expertise.

He also intends to open up access to the club's greenhouse, equestrian program, and indoor amenities to community organizations during the offseason. 

“I believe that this project should be a great resource to the island," Worden said. "We think that by limited development, really looking at it through a serious lens of sustainability, and then thinking about ways that the club, its members, and the club as an institution, can be philanthropically oriented to the island, that really excites us. We think this is a project that can be a model for sensitive development… We really talk about it as having a light touch, and if we can be a light touch, but have a big impact, that’s sort of the best of all worlds.”

The club is targeting June 2028 for its opening.