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Belmont Plans Pique Neighbors' Interest, Ire
Community College Ponders Senior Housing, Other Options

Susan DeFord, Washington Post Staff Writer
Originally published November 28, 2004

Belmont, tucked away near Interstate 95 in eastern Howard County, is a throwback to a genteel era. There's a gracious 18th-century house with a sumptuous view of fields and woods. There are terraced gardens in the back with fragrant boxwood hedges, a quaint stone barn and what might be the oldest in-ground swimming pool in Howard.

The new owner of this stately expanse near Elkridge is Howard Community College, and the school has many ideas about how to use Belmont's 83 acres. One proposal is to build senior housing, although the property carries a preservation easement that limits development. When that idea surfaced a few weeks ago, unhappy neighbors along Belmont Woods Road addressed the college's board of trustees and hired three law firms.

Howard Community College, Belmont's new owner, plans to continue operating it as a retreat and conference center. (Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)

"Let's get out in the open what the options are, and what is best for Belmont," resident Cathy Hudson said. "That's not what I hear them talking about." She added that the residents have contacted lawyers because they "want to have our facts lined up so we can negotiate" with the college. "We want to be fair and open with them."

College officials said Belmont, with its 1738 manor house built by early settlers Caleb and Priscilla Dorsey, was a buy they couldn't pass up, given the demands facing community colleges to grow and grow quickly.

"We could only imagine what great opportunities it would have for our students," said college President Mary Ellen Duncan. "We have tried to do this not on the public dime."

The college's educational foundation closed on the Belmont purchase Nov. 19 at a cost of $5.2 million. The previous owner, the American Chemical Society, had operated the estate as a private retreat and conference center for 22 years. Besides the 25-room manor house of brick and stucco that's listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the property includes a five-bedroom house, conference rooms in a converted carriage house, tennis courts and a picnic area. Belmont has hosted weddings, private parties and corporate retreats.

The college foundation purchased Belmont without using public dollars or its endowment, relying instead on financing from Bank of America in Baltimore and a $1 million private loan from Columbia home builder Harry L. "Chip" Lundy. Lundy, a former member of the college's foundation board, provided the $1 million down payment and agreed to pay the foundation's interest-only monthly mortgage payments for the next two years. He said he expects to be paid back and resigned from the foundation board in October because "it was a lot cleaner to do it that way. I wanted to be very aboveboard about this."

Lundy said he might be interested in pursuing a housing development at Belmont if those plans materialize.

"This is an opportunity to have a private/public partnership," he said. "The money comes from the private sector, but it benefits the public sector."

Community colleges in Maryland increasingly go after what they call "creative financing alternatives" to get projects rolling, in part because their allocations from state government are lagging and county governments have tight budgets. Meanwhile, a summer report from the Maryland Higher Education Commission said that community colleges can expect an increase of 27 percent in full-time students in the next decade. Community colleges have raised their tuition rates in recent years, but it's an unpopular move at colleges that are supposed to be a more affordable and accessible alternative to four-year institutions.

Montgomery College is developing a biotech business and research park where it intends to make money leasing land to businesses at its Germantown campus. In Prince George's County, the community college is working with residential developers in Bowie to set aside land for an extension campus. In Anne Arundel County, the community college's foundation negotiated with the developers of Arundel Mills Mall to open a retail skills training center inside the mall and to build a four-story college building in the parking lot last year.

"We had this need and wanted to meet it as quickly as possible," said Anne Arundel President Martha A. Smith.

Howard Community College's first goal at Belmont is to continue operating the retreat and conference center, particularly since the school began offering a hospitality management program last year, Duncan said. Anne Johnson, Belmont's general manager who'll continue in that role for the college, said conference business revenue has covered Belmont's operating costs for the past three to four years.

But Duncan said there will have to be changes to accommodate increased business, including a new access road that likely would cut across the surrounding land of Patapsco Valley State Park. The estate's entrance, Belmont Woods Road, is a narrow, tree-lined private lane. The residents' opposition to senior housing hasn't dampened Duncan's enthusiasm for the idea.

"I think that's still a very viable option," she said, describing how colleges throughout the country have pursued the concept. "The idea of senior housing connected with a community college is really neat."

There's some question how much new building can occur at Belmont. A 21-year-old preservation easement, held by the Maryland Historical Trust, covers 68 acres of the property, said Alan D. Ullberg, the Washington lawyer who drafted the easement.

The easement was created when the Smithsonian Institution owned Belmont but was preparing to sell it in 1982 to the nonprofit American Chemical Society. The Smithsonian operated Belmont as a conference center after acquiring it in 1964 from its private owner, a former ambassador to Great Britain.

"We wanted to make sure that not only the historic house was preserved but the ambience of the place was preserved," Ullberg said. "It's a special place."

The easement limits building and even the cutting of trees on 28 acres adjoining the manor house. Construction to support the operations of the manor house is allowed on another 40 acres, Ullberg said.

"What goes on there needs to be fairly low-key," he said.

County Council member Christopher J. Merdon (R-Northeast County), said he is sponsoring legislation that would allow the college to sell its development rights, if any exist on the Belmont property.

"I do not want to see any residential development on Belmont," Merdon said. But he added that he understood the college "is looking for a way to fund the purchase of Belmont."

Duncan said she's open to Merdon's idea and to comments from Elkridge residents, who'll meet with college officials next week.

"It's been so much just to get to this point," she said.