After 80 years, Chester County golf club closes
The sign in the window reads "Save Meadow Brook Golf Club," but there seems to be no fight left. The carts are gone. The pro shop is a vacant stretch of green carpet. The phones go straight to a message-less voicemail.
The sign in the window reads "Save Meadow Brook Golf Club," but there seems to be no fight left.
The carts are gone. The pro shop is a vacant stretch of green carpet. The phones go straight to a message-less voicemail.
Last Friday, the club along Route 29 just outside Phoenixville became the property of the Phoenixville Area School District. It marked what might be the final chapter in a story that inflamed emotions last year when the district seized the 50-acres by eminent domain, saying it needed the land for a new school.
For the Campbell family, who ran the club for 80 years - and who have been fighting for months to keep it - it was a drawn-out goodbye. Yet some patrons still didn't know the end had come.
Christine Smyth pulled into the gravel parking lot Monday afternoon, dressed in a purple fleece and planning to take in some chipping practice in the crisp breeze. Smyth, who lives a few miles away in Paoli, knew the club was having problems, but said she saw golfers there a few weeks ago and thought it was still open.
Finding the business shuttered, Smyth walked to a low wall that surrounds the main homestead and sat, absentmindedly pulling out a weed growing from a crack in the stone.
"It's not a great course," she said. "And I'm not a great golfer."
But it was perfect for a casual player, she said, and cheaper than the other nearby clubs - as little as $15 to walk nine holes on weekday afternoons. She fell into a rhythm, coming a few times each season for the past 24 years, she said.
Many regulars did the same at Meadow Brook, taking part in their Monday evening open leagues or the Tuesday morning Senior Scramble, where each player would throw $5 into the pot before the 8 a.m. start.
When the district voted to seize the property last fall, family matriarch Joanne Campbell-Brown, whose great-grandparents bought the land in 1896, cried foul, as did her niece and nephew. They said the district didn't share its intentions beforehand and the seizure took them by surprise.
District officials called that disingenuous.
The family had been willing to sell the property for years and even negotiated with the district, according to Superintendent Alan Fegley. Officials had to use eminent domain when the owners wouldn't budge on an $8 million asking price, more than double a recent evaluation, they said.
The final sale price has not yet been decided and could be settled through negotiations or by a judge.
Pat Young, a family member and co-owner of the property, didn't return a call for comment this week.
Bill Hagner, the family's attorney, said they still have options, including a claim pending in Chester County's Court of Common Pleas that the district violated the state's sunshine law. If a judge agrees, the eminent domain could be vacated, Hagner said. The family is "absolutely" confident about its chances of getting the property back, he said.
District officials said they believe the family has exhausted all recourses. They are moving forward with plans to build an elementary school and early learning center on the land, which they said is ideal because it abuts the existing middle and high schools.
Officials hope to break ground next fall and open for the 2017 school year. Stan Johnson, the district's executive director of operations, said crews are testing on the property this week.
"Let's get on with building the school," he said. "That's been our goal from day one."
But on Monday, the grounds were mostly untouched, the grass still smooth from its last cut.
So Smyth grabbed a club from the back of her convertible and walked onto the greens, taking a few swings in the solitude of the open course.
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@TriciaNadolny