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Nearly 30 parcels of land in Eaglehead will be auctioned Friday at 11 a.m. on the steps of the Frederick County Courthouse.
The auction is the result of foreclosure proceedings because the developers of Eaglehead could not pay back a loan to finish building the 40-year-old community.
According to court records, M&T Bank loaned $21 million in November 2003 to Calvert Development SK Group, Land Stewards, Linganore Development Group, Hamptons, and Pinehurst Vistas to develop certain parts of Eaglehead.
The development companies owed more than $18.2 million on the loan as of late October, according to court documents.
Krista McGowan, an attorney who has represented Land Stewards in discussions with the Frederick Board of County Commissioners, declined to comment on the circumstances behind the developers' inability to pay off the loan.
John Clarke, who was named as a manager of Land Stewards and the other development companies in court documents, also declined to comment on the circumstances leading to the foreclosure.
Eaglehead is the oldest planned development in Frederick County, with a history dating back to the late 1960s.
It was envisioned as a self-contained community of about 30,000 people living in 9,000 homes. The development was originally intended to be built on about 2,200 acres, but this was increased several times. By the late 1990s, the development included more than 3,700 acres.
As of earlier in this decade, there were 3,300 lots created in the development, and about 2,200 of these were developed.
Eaglehead has been through a series of foreclosures and different owners, and the development has faced many problems in its build out. It was initially designed by William and Lou Brosius in 1970. The Brosius brothers designed the community to fit into the landscape, and intended shopping centers and other amenities that still remain unfinished today.
In September, the Board of County Commissioners approved a growth plan for the southeast portion of Frederick County, the New Market Region Plan, which allows 6,600 homes to be constructed there. Eaglehead was one of the communities governed by this newly revised growth plan.
The 2006 version of the plan, which a previous board approved, caused a great deal of controversy and became a major issue in the 2006 election. Revising it was a focus of the current board, which took office after the 2006 election.
The new plan reduced the number of homes that can be built in Eaglehead to about 4,600, slightly more than half of what would have been allowed under the 2006 plan. County commissioners cited infrastructure concerns — mainly inadequate roads — as the main reason for reducing the number of houses that could be built in Eaglehead and the region as a whole, which covers about 47,000 acres. In July, Thomas E. Lynch, an attorney representing Land Stewards and the other development companies, sent a letter to the county commissioners threatening a lawsuit if they passed the plan with a greatly reduced number of houses.
The auction will take place on the steps of the Frederick County Courthouse at 11 a.m. Friday, according to an advertisement for Nikolaus Schandlbauer and Frederick Potter, whom M&T Bank have appointed as trustees. The 28 land parcels contain 216 lots, according to the advertisement. The property may be sold all together, or by individual parcels, according to the advertisement.
