Buyer said it is ‘very unlikely’ property will continue as a club.
A Maryland-based residential developer is in the process of purchasing the Gettysburg Country Club, and the company’s president said it’s “very unlikely” that the property will remain a country club.
March 30 is the scheduled closing date between Woodhaven Building and Development Inc., of Manchester, Md., and Susquehanna Bank, the current property owner, according to Woodhaven’s president, Martin K.P. Hill.
Hill said the company has “no idea right now” what it will do with the 120-acre golf course property between Chambersburg Road and Country Club Lane. The club is also within the 6,000-acre boundary of the Gettysburg National Military Park, and was the site of significant fighting during the Battle of Gettysburg.
“We’re looking at every economically viable option that we can come up with,” Hill said on Tuesday, declining to give any specific options.
But asked if a country club would remain, he said it was”very unlikely.”
Hill described Woodhaven Building and Development Inc. as a residential development company that develops land and sells it to builders.
The company has spent more than 30 years developing land for several residential communities in Maryland and southcentral Pennsylvania, and built in the area for 35 years before selling its former building company to a national company in 2002, Hill said.
In addition to land development in Hanover and Manchester, the group has developed land off Old Mill Road in Gettysburg that wasthen purchased by ummit Homes to build The Preserves at Cumberland Village, an active adult community.
While Hill would not disclose the sale price of Gettysburg Country Club, he said his company looked at the property about a year ago and took a quick look at it again a few weeks ago before making “a bottom-line offer” that was accepted by Susquehanna Bank.
“We knew we were bottom fishing. When you do that, you’re never confident, but that’s where we determined the value was,” Hill said.
The Gettysburg Country Club fell into financial distress in 2008, and Susquehanna Bank ultimately foreclosed on the property. It went up for sale at a sheriff’s auction for a minimum of $2.79 million in February 2009, but no one placed a bid. That transferred the property back to the bank.
Land development was exactly what preservationists and the Gettysburg National Military Park hoped to avoid when Gettysburg Country Club went up for sale in February 2009.
About a month later, Gettysburg National Military Park made an appearance on the Civil War Preservation Trust’s annual Top 10 list of American’s most endangered Civil War battlefields.
While the park has regularly appeared on the list since 2001, it was the first year that Gettysburg Country Club was identified as at-risk for land development.
“The park has it listed as a high priority to protect the land,” park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon said in a phone message Tuesday. “According to our land-protection plan, we hope to preserve the property.”
Last year, the park was considering acquiring the land through an easement or through an outright purchase to protect the land from future development.
Like the park, the CWPT also inquired about purchasing the property, but officials said the asking price was too high.
The property is among the significant land related to the Battle of Gettysburg, Lawhon said.
On the first day of the battle, the famed Iron Brigade attacked across Willoughby Run onto what is now the golf course, driving back a Confederate brigade and capturing its commander, Gen. James Archer. Later in the day, Confederate Gen. James Pettigrew’s North Carolina brigade advanced across that same ground to attack the Iron Brigade near the run. Both brigades lost more than 1,000 men that day.
By HEATHER FAULHEFER
For the Daily Record/Sunday News
