Plans progress for Adventist complex

A Seventh Day Adventist Church official said the church is still moving forward on its plans for a camp and conference center on Gant Hollow Road and is now studying environmental issues related to creating a man-made lake on the property.

In February, when officials of the South Central Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church appeared before a meeting of Bedford County Planning Commission, they described the camp as potentially a $20 million project. They said that by the time a feasibility study had been completed, the church would have already spent $1 million on it.

That feasibility study was supposed to have been completed in August. Eugene Harris, an elder with the church, said on Wednesday that church personnel met with zoning officials in August and that the main delay at this point was making sure that a proposed man-made lake on the property would pass environmental muster. An environmental scientist from South Carolina is scheduled to visit the property in the next few weeks, said Harris.

"We're moving forward with our plan," said Harris, who plans to make a final presentation on the project to church officials in December. At that point, a two-year plan for funding the project would be adopted.

The first stage of the project would be a youth retreat, and Harris said the lake would be essential to make the site attractive for that purpose.

"Water is the drawing card," he said. "You've got to have water."

The camp would join 62 other Adventist-owned camp and retreat facilities in North America. It would be available for church functions but its facilities could also be rented out by non-church groups -- for example, a business holding a corporate retreat. In fact, 60 percent of the guests at Adventist camp facilities are non-Adventists, and the church sees the facilities as a form of outreach. The existing camps are partially subsidized by the church but also bring in revenue.

Harris told planners in February that the camp and conference center would have 40-50 year-round employees and as many as 80 additional employees during the summer camp season.

The committee preparing the feasibility study made site visits to three such Adventist camps in the southeast: Indian Creek in Smithville, Cohutta Springs in Crandall, Ga., and Camp Kulaqua in High Springs, Fla., which is the largest Adventist camp in North America, attracting 53,000 guests per year.

Those facilities contain numerous amenities, such as water parks, golf courses and equestrian facilities. But in many cases, it took 20 or 30 years to completely develop the sites, said Harris.

Initial estimates of the cost of developing a camp here are $17.4 million in present-day dollars, or an estimated $20.5 million as costs increase.

In the mid-1990s, the Gant Hollow Road site was the home of the Dede Wallace Wilderness Program, a boot camp for troubled youth which was criticized by neighbors and by law enforcement officials because of a serious runaway problem and because it accepted teens with more serious criminal records than initially proposed. Eventually, then-Gov. Don Sundquist put pressure on the Nashville-based Dede Wallace Center (now known as Centerstone) which resulted in the camp's closure.

But the Adventist camp facility would be a recreational church camp aimed at normal teenagers.