Three Things about Elkridge

I dropped by the Timbers at Troy golf club today. I was in the neighborhood so I decided to check out the new Shady Oaks Grill Room that supposedly opened this past Thursday. I figured it was a good opportunity to drop in and give the place a test beer.

I’m going to have to wait a little longer for that. Though the new bar did in fact open last Thursday it soon closed again. “We’ve got a few bugs to work out,” I was told. The clubhouse bar is now expected to open, for regular business, this coming Wednesday.

Though I called it back in April, it now appears to be official, the county is buying Belmont. According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun, “the county is exercising its right of first refusal to make the purchase, though plans for the property are uncertain.”

There has been some discussion about having the HoCo Conservancy run the 18^th century historic estate but apparently that deal has not been worked out, at least not yet anyway.

Still, it’s probably a good real estate play even it the county simply warehouses the property. The $2.7 million dollar price tag is almost half of what Howard Community College paid for it back in 2004. They could conceivably resell it when the housing market improves for a substantial profit. For now, it is somewhat comforting to know that the county is in control of its destiny. This is a rare gem in HoCo and it would be a shame if the public loses access.

This past week many parents in Elkridge were heartened by the news that the school system has identified a new elementary school site to help alleviate overcrowding at Bellows Spring Elementary and to a certain degee, Elkridge Elementary School. According to this story by Joe Burris in The Sun, the new school would be located “on Ducketts Lane adjacent to U.S. 1, is 10.1 acres and will include space for a ball field and multipurpose field.”

Meanwhile, just across Route 1 from this new school site, The Norbel School may be closing. Norbel purchased and renovated the former eight acre Elkridge High School property from the county back in 2001. In this message posted on howardpubliced discussion forum, Robert Rhodes wrote “Norbel School just announced this week that they will be closing their school immediately. Area public schools are scrambling to find non-public placements for their students before the start of the 2011/12 school year.”