Westmoor Club co-founder Alan Worden has just unveiled Hensdale Club, a roughly 580-member private club planned around a regenerative farm on 10.5 acres off Nantucket's Old South Road. The plan went before the island's Planning Board last week for its first review, and at its center will sit a regenerative market garden and a four-season, 8,000-square-foot greenhouse, and around them Worden would arrange 12 racquet courts, a golf performance center, a wellness and longevity center, two pools, a barn with eight stables, and a clubhouse with 10 guest rooms. The target is a June 2028 opening.
Worden is proposing the club through Scout Island Club LLC, with Workshop/APD as architect. The company would take 10.5 acres of the Valero family's 12-acre parcel at 64 Old South Road on a long-term ground lease. The Valeros keep the remaining 1.5 acres, including the Valero Gym site and the existing garden center, which stays open until construction begins.
The 12 courts will split evenly, four each for tennis, pickleball, and padel, with the golf performance center and the Wellness & Longevity Center beside them. An adult pool and a family pool will sit alongside a bio-pond that will hold stormwater and double as plant-filtered swimming. The barn with its eight stables rounds out the sporting side.
The greenhouse anchors the rest of the grounds. It will pair with a general store, a 10,000-to-12,000-square-foot regenerative market garden and 2,000 square feet of orchards. The clubhouse will hold dining, function rooms, co-working space and its 10 guest rooms, with a bike shop, a kids' club and about 10 club cottages, capped at 15,000 square feet of ground coverage, filling out the site. About 150 seasonal staff would live on site in six housing units with 148 beds. The plan sets aside 175 parking spaces.
The club's own line for the concept is "Some clubs are placed. This one is planted," and the proposal attaches a set of commitments to the island. Worden expects about 60% of member families, roughly 300, on Nantucket at any one time. The club would hand 10 no-cost, three-year memberships to senior leaders of Nantucket nonprofits and public-sector institutions. It would donate the greenhouse's October-through-April produce to the community, a projected 6,000 to 10,000 pounds a year, and open the greenhouse, equestrian and indoor facilities to community organizations in the off-season. Worden also outlined housing for island teachers as a potential benefit.
"For me, the community benefit is not having 10 acres of what CN could be," said chair Dave Iverson, and board member Liza Hatton called the plan "probably less intense than it could be." Scott Wilson, chair of the Naushop board of trustees, told the board, "We view it as the best possible outcome for that piece of property." That reading lines up with what Gale Valero said of the family land earlier: "We don't want to sell it, and we don't want to see it significantly developed." Broker Brian Sullivan argued the other side of the ledger: "The loss of commercial land on Nantucket has been drastic."
Worden's equestrian plans run past the lease line onto the 28.65-acre Land Bank parcel at 41 Milestone Road, directly behind the club site. In July he asked to lease that land long-term for Milestone Stables, a proposed independent 501(c)(3) year-round public equestrian program modeled on Nantucket Community Sailing, with riding, youth instruction, and therapeutic and adaptive programs. The club would put $2 million toward a first phase of a 10-stall barn, a maintenance garage with staff housing, and paddocks, plus $500,000 to launch programming. That land is priority habitat, and Article 97 could require Town Meeting and state approval. The stables remain a separate decision in front of the Land Bank's commissioners, not part of the club permit.