We are so thankful for our city government.  Without  their land grab plan, our properties would remain unchanged forever.  There would be nobody to develop our properties....well except maybe the current legal & rightful owners.

Below are the current property plans straight from the property owners.  We are glad that you, the citizens, care enough to find out about our property plans, because no one from the city even bothered. 

Darrel Proffitt: Tri-Cities Auto Parts
Over the last several years, we have been moving all vehicles to where they are out of site of the road, to make room for camping/parking and continue having our recycling center the most attractive in the tri-cities.  As to future plans, I am currently selling a portion of my land, but not my business.  We will be keeping our buildings, inventory, business and 3.5 acres.  Since my brother passed away earlier this year, I decided to sell part of my property so his widow can live comfortably.  I want to keep my building here and keep a presence here, but we have another location where we can store the cars. 

George Rogers: Rogers Gardens and Reynolds Express
We have been developing our property on a graduated plan for the last few years.  We used to maintain several acres of plant inventory.  About 3 years ago, we began to reduce inventory to create more campground space.  By the spring of 2001, we had sold enough inventory that we could clear off the remaining half of the farm land.  We graded and dumped 300 truck loads of fresh gravel tripling our camping facility's size.  When we were finished, our garden center's retail yard was only an acre, the original 1981 size. 

The development got everyone excited!   Our neighbor told me that he had heard three different rumors about who we had sold our land too.  BMS staff and management were apparently very happy and supportive of our plans for they felt it was great location for NASCAR fans to camp.  In fact, Mr. Bob Rourke of Speedway Motor Sports Inc, the parent company of BMS, stopped by to personally thank us for creating more parking and camping to serve their fans.  Since his title with SMS is "real estate", he kindly asked to call him if we ever wanted to sell, but no offer was tendered verbally or in writing by him.

Right now our trucking company is portable, we move the semi trucks and trailers off of the land before the race making room for NASCAR fans who come to camp with us.  We have had some patrons camping with us for 10 to 20 years.  They really are like family to us, and we have a great family reunion twice a year.

We have plans to make our nursery business portable as well, continuing our expansion.  We plan to eventually to raze our bulb and dry goods buildings; and remove the remainder of the sawdust beds which will convert the rest of the land into campground space.  We plan to modify our greenhouses so that we can take them down before the race and reassemble after the race.  Instead of driving the hoops (green house frame), directly into the ground, we will pour concrete pads with permanent hoop holes that we can cap during the race.  Several of our campers have suggested to us that we do not break down our main large greenhouse, but turn it into a shower facility during the race.   If this can be done while meeting all health, safety and privacy issues; it would be a welcome addition.

In making our nursery portable, not only do we plan to expand the total number of camping spots, but the services offered as well.  Currently about 15 of our 120 camping spots have electric power, we plan to purchase additional transformers and create as many power spots as fans demand, up to the full usable size of the property.  Speaking of usable, we also have more excavating and grading plans, we can create another couple of acres in the back with some additional grading.

We will be able to completely finish and finance these development plans upon selling a parcel of non revenue producing commercial property in Kingsport between Lowe's and Brandy Mill Apartments. 

Between the two NASCAR races, nature provides this little thing called Spring and Summer.  We do the vast majority of our garden center business during a 13 week period in late spring early summer.  In fact, the original rescheduling of the spring NASCAR Race a few years back probably decimated between 5% and 10% of our annual retail sales as no one would shop with us due to the traffic.   The growth of our campground was originally to supplement this lost income, but now it has become a business objective. 

After the races, we can reassemble our greenhouses and bring in plant material for our customers.  We will have stop carrying large ball and burlap trees, staying with small containerized annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs.  But those are our best selling items anyway.  

As our garden center business will only cover a small percentage of the land, the remainder can be leased out to other portable type businesses that can be gone during the race.   This could be an auto dealership, RV sales, etc.

Every appraisal we have had done on our land, defined the "best and highest use" of our land to be a campground.  We are currently developing our land to reach this goal.