KENTLANDS - COMMUNITY WITH A VISION
The modern history of Kentlands begins with the 1988 sale of 352 acres of the old Kentlands Farm from the Kentlands Foundation Trust and Helen Danger Kent to Great Seneca Limited Partnership, a division of Joseph Alfandre & Co.
The price Alfandre paid has never been clear. The sum has been variously reported as low as $41 million and as high as $64 million, although the latter figure may have included development costs. The land cost clearly reflected the overheated real estate market of the mid- 1980's, however, as well as Kentlands' unique location as one of the last remaining large pieces of undeveloped land in the Rockville-Gaithersburg area of Montgomery County. Chevy Chase Savings & Loan Corporation, the centerpiece entity of the Chevy Chase magnate B. Francis Saul's financial empire, financed the purchase.
Alfandre quickly sold -- for $17 million -- a portion of the site adjacent to the future Great Seneca highway (then under construction) to midwestern shopping center magnate Mel Simon for development a modern (and rather conventional) regional mall. Alfandre's initial thought was to develop the rest of the former Kentlands Farm along somewhat conventional suburban lines, but with the architecturally pure house types he was known for building, most recently in his Washingtonian Woods subdivision.
But Alfandre became increasingly captivated with the beauty and order of the rather formal old Kentlands Farm 
complex and his sense of what could be accomplished began to evolve. Perhaps, he thought, the farm complex buildings could become the heart of a neighborhood more reminiscent of old-time country villages.
Alfandre met with land planners Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, then best known for their recently completed project at Seaside on the Florida panhandle, a neotraditional resort village. After trips with Duany to a number of U.S. and European traditional towns, Alfandre became convinced that a neotraditional town could work at Kentlands. He hired Duany's firm, DPZ, to create a vision, the Kentlands Vision, of a new-old community -- a neotraditional neighborhood -- at Kentlands.
Should you like more information on the Kentlands community or any neighboring areas, please contact Susie Lemar at 240.447.9207
You can also email us at: info@homesalesmaryland.com
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