Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Seventeen years ago, Lanier Frantz and his wife, Thecla, put more than 1,162 acres of their Craig County property into a conservation easement. Lanier says of the Craig County land they've made available for conservation: "We sort of appreciate it for what it is and that's a contiguous piece of land. ... We'd like to know it's going to stay this way."

Frantz, an avid pilot, is pictured here in a hangar on his property, which contains multiple gliders. The Western Virginia Land Trust is honoring the Frantzes with an environmental award.

Lanier Frantz drives a pickup across Craig Creek, which winds its way through his property.

Want to go?

• The Western Virginia Land Trust is honoring Lanier and Thecla Frantz at its annual conservation celebration Sunday in Troutville. For more information, call (540) 985-0000.

What are conservation easements?

They are agreements between a landowner and a conservation organization — more than 30 organizations, state agencies and local governments can hold conservation easements in Virginia — to limit or prevent property from being developed in exchange for tax breaks.

Easements are individually negotiated deals, voluntary arrangements between the landowner and the easement holder. One landowner’s conservation easement may allow him to build up to two houses per 100 acres, while another easement may prohibit additional houses but allow the owner to timber some land.

The tax breaks are based on the easement’s value — the difference between the land’s market value before and after development restrictions have been imposed.

• State tax credit: 40 percent of an easement’s value can be used to reduce or eliminate a landowner’s state income tax bill. Excess tax credits — those over what a landowner owes — can be sold. The going rate is about 75 to 80 cents on the dollar.
• Federal tax deductions: Easements are a special class of charitable donations, so an easement’s value can reduce the amount of income taxed by up to 50 percent for up to 15 years.

NEW CASTLE -- If you've ever swung a 9-iron at Hanging Rock Golf Club, you've been on the farm that was Lanier Frantz's boyhood home. Its orchards and cattle made way for cart paths and houses.

If you've ever seen a sailplane glide down to the grass landing strip between Frantz's house in New Castle and Craig Creek, you've seen a farm that will never become a subdivision -- not even one with fairways for green space.

Seventeen years ago, Lanier and Thecla Frantz placed most of their 1,400 acres under a conservation easement -- an agreement that forever limits the use and development of a piece of property in exchange for tax breaks.

It was the first conservation easement west of Lynchburg, according to Roger Holnback, executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust. It was recorded six years before there was a Western Virginia Land Trust.

Now the land trust is honoring the Frantzes with the second A. Victor Thomas Environmental Stewardship Award. Madison Marye, a Montgomery County farmer and former state senator, received the first. Frantz will receive the award Sunday at the land trust's annual conservation celebration.

The award is named for the late Vic Thomas, Roanoke's man in the House of Delegates for three decades. Thomas was a champion of land conservation who helped make hunting and fishing constitutional rights in Virginia.

In 2000, Thomas sponsored House Joint Resolution No. 59, which commended Lanier Frantz for his conservation practices, his wildlife management programs, for proving "there are ways for landowners to gain a financial return on their land without selling it to developers" and for "demonstrating that private property and conservation are compatible."

But none of that stuff was at the forefront of Frantz's thinking when he bought his first piece of Craig County.

"I don't expect I'd been in this county over three or four times in my life when I came upon this farm and saw the possibility of an airstrip," Frantz said recently in the great room of his home. "That was probably the overriding thing. Of course, the proximity to the National Forest and to Craig's Creek were great incentives, but the overriding interest was the possibility of an airstrip.

"We were fairly young in aviation then -- we, my brothers and I -- and to have your own place to park was pretty neat."

Keeping it contiguous

In 1960, when the Frantzes bought just more than 300 acres of the valley between North Mountain and Sinking Creek Mountain, they got some advice from Frantz's father.

"His words," Frantz said, "were, 'Son, don't try to buy all the land that joins you.' "

Frantz did it anyway.

"Pretty much," he said. "There are limits."

Frantz bought land. He swapped land with the National Forest Service. He more than quadrupled the size of his farm.

"My family and I sat down and talked about it at some length," Frantz said. He and his wife have two grown daughters and two grandchildren. "Realizing that it's been a substantial part of my productive life putting this piece of property together, it would take a sharp Realtor about one Saturday afternoon to tear it all back apart.

"We sort of appreciate it for what it is and that's a contiguous piece of land. ... We'd like to know it's going to stay this way."

So they put it under a conservation easement. Since then it's been a horse farm, a sunflower farm, home to a hunt club and a glider port, among other things. Besides the main house, there are smaller houses, a barn, miscellaneous outbuildings, airplane hangars, and a snack bar that serves folks at the annual sailplane races.

"Something that people don't realize is that you can do all sorts of things within these easements," Frantz said.

The Frantzes' easement allows forestry operations and road building. It makes provisions for a hunt club and a glider club and a grass landing strip, which has grown into New Castle International Gliderport, home to the Blue Ridge Soaring Society and host to an annual regional competition for glider pilots.

There's lots of room for negotiation, Frantz said more than once.

And the deal that's struck is meant to last forever. That perpetuity, Frantz said, trumps everything else.

"We were advised in that direction and it's good advice," he said. "So our first consideration was our desire to see this property held together."

Inventor, 'coon hunter

But Frantz, chairman of Graham-White in Salem, has done a lot more in his 78 years than accumulate land.

He's held several patents. He and a brother came up with the idea of gun safes. He's given two buildings to the Craig County Industrial Development Authority-- one that's set to become a business incubator and another that's home to the county's only medical facility.

"Lanier, he's a mover and a shaker," said Craig County Administrator Richard Flora. "He makes things happen."

And sometimes he goes hunting. And sometimes that generates a story.

Charlie Barnes, Frantz's friend and neighbor, said that years ago, on the way home from a successful 'coon hunt, Frantz slipped into Tex and Doris Ritter's house. Tex Ritter was a 'coon hunter, too, but that night he'd stayed home.

Frantz put the raccoon in the kitchen sink, with its head resting on its paws on the lip of the sink.

Sometime during the night, a little Ritter called out for a drink of water. Tex Ritter went sleepily to fetch it -- and came face-to-face with the raccoon.

He knew immediately how it got there.

After he'd calmed down a bit, Ritter went back to bed. Once he settled in, Ritter woke his wife, telling her that one of the children wanted a glass of water.

Then he lay there waiting to hear her scream.

"He got two of them with one 'coon," Barnes said.

Frantz said the story is mostly true, but not complete.

"The following Thursday, I was invited to dinner," he said. "And we ate that 'coon. That shows you what a good sport Doris is."