Group Working To Save Stone Meadows Farm

A group of area residents have been hard at work over the past few months to pull together options to save the Stone Meadows Farm in Middletown.

The 168-acre property along Newtown-Langhorne Road across from the George School has faced the threat of development while members of the nonprofit Save Stone Meadows Farm have worked to preserve the farm that is Middletown’s largest piece of privately owned agricultural property. The property has several structures and dozens and dozens of acres used to grow corn.

Metropolitan Development Group has plans to construct 124-single-family homes on Stone Meadows Farm. They company has an agreement with the Stone family to buy the property if their plans for housing move forward. Sources have told LevittownNow.com the estimated purchase price for the farm is between $8 million and $16 million.

Middletown resident and Save Stone Meadows Farm representative Jeff Miller said earlier this week that the group has been collecting pledges and donations. Those funds and additional ones raised as the effort to save the property continues could be put toward a possible preservation of the property.

Representatives of the nonprofit declined to release how much money has been pledged and released, but a news clipping from September 2017 puts the figure at “more than $500,000.”

The grassroots group has hopes of using the funds they already have locked along with additional funding from government programs and additional private sources to conserve the farm.

Miller said a representative from Metropolitan Development Group told the group to make them an offer for the property. However, they have not yet been able to make an offer to the developer who currently has exclusive rights to the property.

Due to the Stone family’s agreement with the developer, parties interested in making offers for the farm are not allowed to directly present a plan to the members of the family, group members said.

Members of Save Stone Meadows Farm want to keep Middletown’s largest agricultural property and keep the farm open. The group also has concerns about impacts a large development could have on already congested roads, their taxes, nearby wells and water systems, and the local ecosystem.

Linda Mead, a Middletown resident and 35-year land preservation expert, has worked with Save Stone Meadows Farm in efforts to save the property. She said the farm plays a special role in the community and deserves to be saved.

Before the Board of Supervisors recently, Mead highlighted a similar property in Branchburg Township, New Jersey, that was saved through funds from private and public sources. In that case, the farm was the last one in the township and was being sold to a developer for $20 million. Conservation groups were able to use various sources of funding to present an offer and show that tax benefits provided by conservation actually provided more money than the developers efforts.

“We would love to see this property preserved. We recognize that it really comes down to the land owner to make this choice,” Mead said.

Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick’s office recently pledged support for preservation effort through a letter.

The Stone Meadows Farm was once the home of famed actors Ezra Stone and Sara Seegar, who dominated stage and screen during their careers last century. According to BucksLocalNews.com, actors Debbie Reynolds, Jackie Cooper, and Gary Merrill were among the many celebrities who joined the Stones at celebrations at the farm. A Philadelphia Inquirer article from the early 1990s reported Ezra Stone and Sara Seegar began living on and off in Bucks County in 1946 and moved here full time from Hollywood in 1979.

In the last decade, a previous Middletown Board of Supervisors attempted to preserve the farm as open space through condemnation but their efforts failed.