Applicant: conservation easement and trust will preserve Wildwood Farm, attorney says

Marty Regan, attorney for the applicants, told the Planning Commission that Wildwood Farm is held in a charitable remainder trust and that trustees have negotiated a perpetual conservation easement designed to protect the property's agricultural character. Regan said the trust structure names Melanie Taylor and Diversified Trust as trustees and that the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis is the intended recipient under the trust after Melanie Taylor's lifetime.

Regan described the mechanism that the trustees, applicants and prospective recipient have agreed on: the charity would impose the conservation easement before conveying title to the university, and the easement would run with the land. "the trustees have an obligation to protect the asset, and the asset without a conservation easement is worth a lot more than a property encumbered by an easement," Regan said. Commissioners asked how tightly the trustees could be bound and whether future changes could permit expansion; Regan said the trustees and university counsel negotiated restrictive terms and that any intensification of use would require separate approvals, including another use-on-appeal before the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Land-trust oversight was mentioned as an additional protection: the applicant said the Land Trust of Tennessee will administer the easement, providing another layer of oversight. The transcript records repeated assurances that the conservation easement is intended to be perpetual, but the easement document itself was not submitted in the hearing record; commissioners instructed staff to ensure the DRC, infrastructure reviews and permits reflect the conditions adopted with the site-plan approval.