The campus at Callaway Gardens includes 14,000 acres of land. This is a naturally biodiverse region where the Piedmont, Coastal Plain and Appalachian Mountain plant communities overlap. Over 93% of our property is in greenspace despite being a venue that up to three quarters of a million people visit each year. Historically, portions of our land were severely impacted by erosion and poor farming practices. Most of the construction and building on this property has occurred on already severely impacted sites. In order to further protect the land Callaway recently placed 2507 acres of our most biologically diverse land in a permanent conservation easement under the Federal Forest Legacy program. We gave up the development rights but retained the rights to manage the land pro-actively for biodiversity and quality wildlife habitat. The Georgia Forestry Commission monitors our compliance with the terms of this easement on an annual basis. The land under permanent conservation protection at Callaway has been dedicated as the Preserve at Callaway. A board of conservation professionals guides activities on The Preserve. The Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, The Georgia Conservancy, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and Columbus State University are all represented on our Board. In 2002 Callaway designated 5.27 acres adjacent to the conference center as open space. Due to the success of the conference center, there is now a need for additional lodging space to serve the conference center. Callaway would like to locate the hotel adjacent to the conference center for a variety of reasons. - Infrastructure (roads, parking, water, sewer, electricity, gas, telephone) serving the conference center can also serve the hotel. - Conference center attendees can walk from the hotel to the conference center rather than being shuttled from another site at the Gardens. - Service deliveries (food, waste disposal, supplies) can be combined for the both the conference center and the hotel. These reasons reduce both economic costs and the environmental impacts of the new hotel. In order to locate the new hotel next to the conference center, the hotel will sit on a portion of the land designated as open space in 2002. Callaway intends to register this new project as a LEED-NC project and pursue SS Credit 5.2 using the "campus setting" approach in coordination with the proposal below. Callaway proposes the following in regards to the land it designated in 2002 as open space: - Using the campus setting, it is our desire to synergistically preserve additional bio-diverse greenspace adjacent to land already under permanent conservation protection. We propose to designate 5.27 acres of bio-diverse land currently owned by Callaway that is adjacent to land already being preserved under its Forest Legacy project. This land will aid in protecting a creek by providing a broader vegetative buffer. In addition this land will help protect a population of Southern Twayblade a plant listed as rare by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The public will have access to this land through naturalist-guided hikes. - Stewardship of these 5.27 acres will be transferred to The Preserve at Callaway. The Preserve\'s mission is: To operate The Preserve as a model of responsible land and wildlife stewardship through conservation, habitat management, sustainable forestry and watershed protection as well as to promote responsible public enjoyment of the land. - Allow construction of the hotel to occur on the land designated as open space in 2002. While this land is open space, in the context of our property it is considered to be "brownfields." The land is highly impacted, there is low species diversity and the health of many of the trees is poor. The land set aside that we want to trade for the one established originally is richer, biodiverse land that protects a watershed and provides nature education opportunities. Is this acceptable?