How You Can Help

People to Contact

Governor Mark Warner 

Local New Paper Editor Exposes Charlie Simmons

Charlie Simmons Speaks

Questions for the Politicians

Ruff Gets Ruffed Up

Divide and Conquer Strategic of Proponents won't work

Golf Course - Conflict of Interest for Local Officials?

Biased News-Progress Article

Print out Petition for you to get signatures

A Beach Instead of a Golf Course

Va, Department of Conservation and Recreation

The Sam Snead Group has got local real estate developers to push business leaders and politicians into trying to force the hand of the State Park people (Department of Conversation and Recreation) and the US Army Corp of Engineers.  Politicians are saying that local people want the Golf Course but they do not.

Based upon going door to door in Mecklenburg County we have found that 80 to 90% of the people do not want the golf course on public lands.  We are finding that democracy is not working in Mecklenburg County and Virginia.

Only by people voicing their opinions on this will we be able to stop the politicians from giving our land away.

Facts

• Additional Sam Snead Golf Courses are planned for Virginia State Parks once Occoneechee is done.
  

• A few people stand to gain millions by you giving millions of dollars of your land.  There seems to be a conflict of interest with primary leaders pushing the golf course since they are in the real estate business and likely to reap a handsome profit from real estate around the golf course.
  

• Golf financing experts say now is not a good time to build a new golf course unless it is really a real estate development in disguise.
  

• The land being proposed is sacred and hallowed ground of the Occoneechee Indians.  This is the place of one of the first massacres of Indians in the country which led to a national extermination policy.
  

• The land contains some of the county's only 100 year old hard wood trees which rest on virgin rolling hills.
  

• Sam Snead's Group wants prime lake front property free from you so they can become wealthier and thus have the power to take more land.

Facts on the Golf Course Industry

• "Now, the industry is in a free fall” says George Marderosian, president of Clubhouse Capital, a Providence, R.I., company that lends money and advises banks on financing golf courses.
   
• What you had was an almost crazed influence of real estate development without paying close attention to the marketplace," said Darrin B. Davis, senior project director at the National Golf Foundation. "Golf was seen more and more as the amenity that sells the project."  
  
• “The golf market, he said, has gone soft along much of the eastern seaboard, with the notable exception of New York, Philadelphia and Boston,” says George Marderosian  
  
• “Many developers knew they would lose money on fancy courses, Mr. Creed said, but they more than recovered their golf losses by charging premium prices on houses. Once all the houses sold, he said, developers often sold their courses to management companies, at 50 to 70 cents on the dollar.” “There is nobody out here," he said. "It is a ghost town."  
  
• "The glut of golf courses is not specific to one region or area; it is a national issue," said Richard Creed, a consultant with the golf group at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mr. Creed said there were overbuilt golfing communities in Florida, Arizona, Virginia and California.  
  
• It is not happening - here or elsewhere. The total number of paid rounds here has decreased slightly since 1999, according to Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, a marketing cooperative. Rounds played so far this year across the country are down 5.2 percent, according to Golf Datatech, a research company.  
•  
•  

• Send one or all of the messages below to the Governor:

  Letter 1
  

  Letter 2: 
  We Just Passed a Bond for $119 million to purchase 
  state park land and I am opposed to now 
  giving away 2 million dollars of state park land 
  to a private company 

  Letter 3
  Since we are Giving Away Land in Occoneechee 
  I am requesting my 23 Acres and a Mule 

  Letter 4
  I believe that an Ethical Conflict of Interest Occurred 
  when Mayor Burnette Voted on the Master Plan
  
  Letter 5
  I am Laid off in Mecklenburg County
  and the Golf Course will NOT help me

  Golf Course Proponents make 
  claims regarding petitions, 
  goats milk and false information!! 

  Hey!! Occoneechee State Park is in Boydton, 
  So Why is Clarksville Trying to Steal it!!!