Published: November 30, 2008 10:30 pm      

Washington County losing rural character

HAGERSTOWN — Bob Coss remembers the treehouse he helped build in the mulberry tree in the woods behind a neighbor’s house off Pangborn Boulevard.

“It was pretty big. I think we had three rooms — two levels right above each other and a third level kind of at a kilter — made out of old pallets and deteriorating rubber mats we found at an old factory,” recalled Coss, now 48. “It was fancy.”

All of that exists just in his memory now. Much of the woods and the fields that Coss remembers playing in have been replaced the past few years by dozens of new homes in the Kensington Villas development.

“There’s a house — or maybe it’s the middle of that development road — literally right in the spot where that treehouse sat,” he said.

In 1957, when his parents, Richard E. and Betty Coss, moved there, the land along what’s now the 100 and 200 blocks of Pangborn Boulevard was a cornfield with home lots staked out on it, Betty said.

The location was “great for raising three children” because it was right across the street from Pangborn Elementary School, which then was almost new, Betty said. And there was the draw of the woods and the fields for “my son,” Betty said, smiling. “He would be out looking for snakes, and he found some.”

“We spent a lot of time back in that area,” Bob said. “We could go back there on our minibikes and not damage anything. There were two empty houses back there that are now where the Weis Market is.”

The tracks became a bit of a fascination, too, to Aaron Light Jr. and his wife, Terri.

Within a year after their marriage in 1981, Aaron heard that 77 acres of the area on both sides of the track on the southern side of Jefferson Boulevard where he’d grown up was for sale, Terri recalled.

The land, in three parcels, was owned by ADCO Inc. which had planned to develop the part just west of the tracks for housing, she said.

Terri said she and Aaron, who owned Bronka Construction, saw the acreage as an investment to pay for college for the children they hoped to have someday. The $130,000 price seems small now, but the deal they struck to pay off ADCO within five years was quite a challenge for the newlyweds, Terri said.

A few years after buying the land, the Lights got seven of the acres rezoned for business, thinking they would build a new office for their small construction company.

But in 1987, local businessmen Cal Ewing Jr. and Howard “Blackie” Bowen offered to buy those seven acres. They agreed to pay $144,000 — more than the Lights paid for the entire 77, she said. The seven acres are where a Food Lion and a car wash are now.

“We were given an offer we couldn’t refuse,” Terri said. “I mean, stuff like that lands in your lap, what are you going to do?”

On April 29, 2002, she sold about 40 acres on the western side of Eastern Boulevard in two transactions worth $1.5 million. The final 29 acres were on Eastern Boulevard behind a Food Lion. A developer paid $1.3 million in 2006 for it, Terri said.

The land became the new two-story Kensington villas Betty Coss and Louise Perrott saw out their back windows, beginning in 2005.

From the start, Betty didn’t like the large houses, attached in units of two, that sprang up not far from the six blueberry bushes that lined her backyard. The houses, built in straight rows on either side of the development’s main road paralleling Pangborn Boulevard, block much of Betty’s view of South Mountain far off beyond the new Food Lion.

The development makes her “heartsick,” she said. “It’s not my land,” she added between tightly pressed lips. “But they went up ... fast, terribly fast.”

She doesn’t like it either that the Pangborn Elementary School she has known is to be torn down this summer, denying use of even the “gymnasium that’s still fine” to organizations that would benefit.

Bob Coss is pragmatic about the changes.

“It’s different,” he said. “’Course now, I’ve got teenage boys. It’s a totally different world. Totally different world for them. They don’t seem to be too interested in building a treehouse. They spend all their days now IM-ing their friends and looking at YouTube. Like I say, it’s a totally different world.”

Terri Light Narron, 53, who since has remarried, hopes the decisions that she and Aaron made in selling the land and seeing it developed will prove beneficial for the area.

“It’s just evolved into something that was out of our vision. I hope we have contributed to a good use of the land there,” she said.

Distributed by the Associated Press.