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During an intensive two-day Strategic Planning session last August HLT's Directors developed a strategy for selling some of its lands that had been donated without any conservation restrictions and using the proceeds to preserve other lands.
Following this plan, the Trust has put three properties on the market. They are:
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The Schueler Property, 2.03 acres adjacent to the Forest Greens Lake Preserve at 2100 Perryman Road;
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The Beamer-Edwards Woods, 19.86 acres on Churchville Road near Carsins Run.
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Magnolia Woods, 18.46 acres of woods and wetland on Route 152 also known as Magnolia Road.
On July 8, 2004, Kay Deitz Real Estate, Inc. completed the sale
of the Trust's 2-acre lot on Perryman Road to Ashley, Inc. for $120,000.
After paying the commission to Kay Deitz plus other settlement expenses,
the Trust's net-income to the benefit of its J. N. Hegeman Land Fund and
Operating Budget was $114,767.50. Betty Jane Schueler had donated it to the Trust in July 2000. This wooded property then included a very large dilapidated and vandalized masonry building that had once been the clubhouse for a long vanished Forest Greens golf course. With the gift HLT accepted the responsibility for an Environmental Assessment and for the demolition of the old clubhouse and since then has spent approximately $40,000 to demolish it and clear the site. (In 1994 the Harford County Department of Parks and Recreation had purchased the 103-acre Forest Greens Lake Preserve for $60,000 after the Trust purchased it in 1992 for $153,500.) This former Schueler Property has development rights and is adjacent to the Preserve and not far from the former Gabler Crab House.
Toy Beamer and her sister, Laura A. Edwards, in 1995 donated this land without any restrictions so that there would be "at least one place left for the birds and small animals," they said. The Trust received two bids for this property and on May 27, 2004 sold it for $24,000 with a deed that extinguishes all development rights of the property and prohibits transfer of any such rights to other lands.
The Trust received the Magnolia Woods from its three elderly owners, who had held it as an investment for many years and wished to lighten their Estates' tax liability. Even though this wet, forested land has always been zoned General Industrial, current state and county regulations make it undevelopable, because it all lies within the 100-year floodplain and because the construction of State Highway 152 there deprives it of any practical access. The Trust had one offer of $20,000. Kay Deitz Real Estate, Inc. in Bel Air is handling this sale for the Trust.
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