Randy McRoberts took one look at the illustration sitting on one of our desks, sighed and said, "What a shame."
McRoberts, sports editor of The Aegis and an enthusiastic golfer, was referring to a plan to redevelop Beechtree Golf Course near Aberdeen into a housing community. A concept plan for Beechtree Estates calls for building 743 houses on the 300-acre golf course, which enjoys a good reputation with golfers far beyond Harford County.
"I think it's the best course in the county," said McRoberts, who doesn't play regularly at Beechtree, where a round costs $85-95 during the peak season. Still, McRoberts said he wasn't surprised about the latest turn of events. After all, he noted, the property was zoned for development long before the golf course was built in 1998.
Representatives of the owner, James Knott Development Corp., of Baltimore, say there's been no final decision to turn Beechtree Golf Course into Beechtree Estates, but the groundwork is being laid nonetheless. On Jan. 29, a public information session was held on the plan as required by county law. It's the first step in the regulatory approval process, which is likely to take two years at a minimum.
About 40 people attended the meeting, most who live across from the course along Stepney and Old Philadelphia Roads. There were the usual concerns such as increased traffic, stormwater runoff and noise and dirt from construction equipment, but all in all, the majority of the people who spoke said the development should have a positive effect on the community.
With townhouses expected to sell the $300,000 range and single family houses selling in the $500,000 range, the development would raise property values in the immediate neighborhood, residents said. And several lamented their own properties would be more difficult to sell in the future, mainly because of their failing well and septic systems. Many wanted to know if they could work out some deal to get the public services to their properties, in part courtesy of the developer.
The possibility Beechtree could be turned into houses has been a topic of conversation in local business and political circles for nearly a year. Coupled with this week's closure of the private County Club of Swan Creek in Oakington and the continuing attempts by the owner of Wetlands Golf Course on the other side of Aberdeen to redevelop his property, it would seem the bloom has come off Harford's golf boom.
Beechtree, Wetlands, Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace and Mountain Branch in Joppa are all top notch public courses that opened within the past 10 years, when the number of golf venues in the county doubled. Now, however, the course roster seems to be shrinking fast.
Swan Creek, one of the county's oldest courses, was recently bought by its neighbor, the Father Martin's Ashley, drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, mainly because the Ashley people feared the owner would eventually sell out to a housing developer and they wanted to protect their flank. Wetlands' owner Sam Smedley and a group of local partners have an ambitious plan to reconfigure the golf course and develop several hundred acres around it for housing. The plan is on hold, however, as the Wetlands people try to get annexed by the city of Aberdeen to take advantage of its public water and sewer services. People living around Wetlands who oppose the plan successfully scuttled the last annexation attempt two years ago.
Mountain Branch, originally developed by a local man who took on an out-of-state partner, has experienced several ownership changes since it opened seven years ago. The 300-acre property is located in a prime area for development, but it has agricultural zoning. One county official said flatly he doubts the county government would ever agree to rezone the property if the owner wanted to switch from golf to houses.
Bulle Rock is among the highest rated public courses in the country in major golf publications. Its original developer planned to have a much bigger scale, two to three courses and a conference/resort hotel, but eventually sold out when he could secure financing to move ahead. A group of developers, fronted by Harford's Clark Turner, bought the property and immediately began developing all the land around the golf course, which is three years into a five-year deal to host the McDonald's LPGA Championship, a major stop on the woman's professional tour.
Turner said last year he expects the golf course to stay as is, but he wouldn't commit to it being that way forever, noting it has to pay its way.
There are obviously economic forces at work. The lure of BRAC demand for housing. The increased expenses of operating a golf course. Market saturation at a time when growth in the number of golfers has slowed. Joe Snee, a lawyer who represents Knott Development at Beechtree, said he isn't sure why his client decided at this time to go in another direction. Then again, many were surprised when the company, a commercial and industrial specialist, decided to build Beechtree in the first place.
When Bulle Rock opened nearly a decade ago, W. Dale Hess, a golfer and one of Harford's wealthiest residents who knows a thing or two about land development, played a round at Bulle Rock as a guest of founder and then-owner Ed Abel. Hess, who can afford to play anywhere in the world and has, said it was one of the best courses he had ever set foot on. But, could Abel, who had never built a course but thought every player should have an opportunity to play on a world class one, succeed with the venture?
Hess said he believed Abel had the financial resources to support the course, which Abel said cost $18 million to build, for a year before it had to start showing a strong profit. "But," he added, "that's a lot of money to be tied up in the ground. It would sure make me nervous."
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