Getting Caves Valley off the ground as a residential community wasn't exactly a swinging success.
Plans for the exclusive golf club began formulating in the late 1980s, and it was assumed that the sale of the 34 lots would help ease the club's $40 million debt by 1998.
However, the combination of lots priced in the $500,000 range - the highest Baltimore had seen - and the recession of the early 1990s stymied sales, and only one lot, for $425,000, was sold in its first three years.
"The primary reason was the price," said Steve Smith of Gaylord Brooks Realty Co. Inc., the developer of a number of high-end communities in Baltimore County, including Bridle Ridge at St. Timothy's School. "I would guess that it was too far ahead of the real estate market."
Said Tim Rodgers, president of Hill & Co., a real estate brokerage in Cross Keys that deals primarily in luxury properties, "The lots back then were 40 to 50 percent higher [in price] than any other lots."
To infuse the property with cash, two corporate and financial supporters of Caves Valley Golf Club - Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. and USF&G;, which later was bought by the St. Paul Cos. - converted $4 million in loan guarantees each to the club into a partnership.
That partnership was called Caves Valley Limited Partnership and took ownership of the remaining 33 lots.
The partnership was then rearranged into two partners: Caves Valley Club Inc., headed by Leslie B. Disharoon, chairman of Caves Valley and one of its founding members, and CV Investors Inc., made up of BGE's Constellation Real Estate Division and USF&G.;
"They had a hard time getting going way back," Rodgers said. "If they didn't have these big corporations when they first started, I don't think they would have made it."
As Baltimore's real estate climate improved and available lots in Baltimore County decreased during the late 1990s, sales in Caves Valley began to improve, but not at half-million dollar prices.
According to public tax records, lots in the community sold for as low as $250,000 on Blendon Road, while those on John Carroll Road - deemed to be the more exclusive because it borders the golf course, with one side carrying views of the 17th and second holes as well as the valley - saw sales generally in the $300,000 to $400,000 range.
Occasionally, a lot would sell at a loss. For example, according to tax records, a 2.42-acre lot on John Carroll Road that first sold for $485,000 in 1992 was resold in 1998 for $500,000 and then resold in 2000 for $425,000.
Of the 34 home sites, 18 have yet to be built on - five on John Carroll Road and 13 on Blendon Road.
"I think that [it] is very clear that there are issues in Baltimore County in terms of developable land," said Karen Hubble Bisbee of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. "And I think the lots were scarfed up because ... people wanted to protect their ability to build in the future ... and that is not unusual in a luxury community like that."
Three homes in the community have been resold, the most recent by Disharoon in March for $1.8 million.
A home owned by former Sun publisher Reg Murphy sold in January for $1.05 million, and the first home to be resold in the community - in November 2000 - went for $1 million. That home is back on the market for $1.5 million.
"I wonder down the road if they will have a hard time selling the existing homes," Rodgers said. "Most of these homes are monuments or dream homes of the present owners, but are they going to be that way to the next owner?"