Northern Baltimore County is a place apart, a land of rolling green hills, horse farms and gentlemen's estates.
Its residents come from the far side of Maryland and the other side of the world, from the City of Baltimore and its suburbs of Towson and Cockeysville. A few were fortunate enough to grow up there. But all have found their little piece of heaven in the northern valleys of Baltimore County.
Now, they say, the devil of development is knocking at their gate.
Valley residents are battling a proposal by Hayfields Farm's new owners, the Mangione family, to build houses and a golf course at the farm, which the Marquis de Lafayette once honored with a silver tankard in 1824 as the best-managed in Maryland.
At stake is much more than the historic farm, most of which sits between Shawan and Western Run roads just west of Interstate 83. Hayfields' strategic location, at the eastern edge of the valleys that spread northwest from the Baltimore Beltway in a blanket of affluence, makes it a barrier to Hunt Valley and the county's urban core. If it is devel- oped, some valley residents concede, they will subdivide their own land, adding to the checkerboard of development.
That would be a dramatic change for the Valleys -- Greenspring, Caves, Worthington and Belfast -- which have been protected by the most restrictive rural zoning in Maryland.
The battle lines have been drawn. On one side are the economic interests -- landowners trying to get the most for their property and meet the demands of a growing, golf-starved county. On the other, farmers and other residents pleading to preserve a less-hurried way of life.
"Once that barrier has been let down, it would be like a cancer growing and coming across the valley," says Betty Fenwick, whose family owns 745 acres west of Hayfields. She says family members have agreed that if Hayfields is developed, they, too, will sell their land for development.
Says Barbara Campbell, whose grandfather was the first black landowner in the Hayfields area and who still attends Gough United Methodist Church there: "If the Hayfields is developed and that changes the valley, something will be lost that can never be replaced."
The uproar was triggered by developer Nicholas B. Mangione's plan to build 50 high-priced houses and a golf course on Hayfields. Mr. Mangione, who built the Turf Valley resort north of Columbia, is awaiting county approvals for the plan. Without those approvals, which would include a rezoning, he could only build 40 houses on the 474-acre tract.
