Lower Merion schools’ condemnation of storied Main Line estate for ball fields encounters growing resistance

John Bennett kindled the hearth on a recent day in what was once his 20,000-square-foot brick Tudor Revival manor replete with heavy wooden doors, wainscoted library, and Mercer floor tile.

The 72-year-old physician-turned-medical-device-entrepreneur recalled how he lost the home and its 10 acres off County Line Road in Villanova through eminent domain in 2018 to make way for middle-school athletic fields. The property, known as Oakwell, contains nearly 700 trees, some of which are thought to date back centuries.

“Everything happened so quickly that there was no way to save it,” Bennett said as he recounted stories about the house, including having a ghost exorcised.

The Lower Merion School District — one of the wealthiest in Pennsylvania — paid Bennett $9.9 million for the house and grounds in the condemnation with plans to clear-cut hundreds of the trees for athletic fields for newly opened Black Rock Middle School. Updated plans show it would keep the Oakwell mansion and a pool house, but a teahouse watched over by a terra cotta warrior, stone fencing, and a brick-walled garden complex all dating back at least 120 years would be razed. The $90 million middle school opened this year. The district plans to start breaking ground for the fields in June.

A loose coalition of local residents has banded together on social media, and various groups have formed with websites including Preserve Oakwell and Save Oakwell. They stage weekly protests at the administration building. They say that destroying what amounts to a mature forest is environmentally irresponsible and that Oakwell is history worth preserving. They have multiple Facebook pages and color brochures. About 3,000 people signed a petition circulated by Climate Action of Lower Merion.

“I’ve been accused of NIMBYism,” said Deb Robbins, a neighbor who has protested since the beginning. “But the truth is, for me, it’s the animals and the trees. There’s so little of that left in the township. So I’ve been protesting against it since the beginning.”

Robbins said opposition includes neighbors, students, environmental activists, parents, and even teachers. The immediate goal of the group is to prevent “destruction” of the estate, and over the longer term, Robbins said, find another location for the fields, it is hoped with the aid of township or district officials.

The taking of Oakwell marks one of several district attempts to build athletic fields for the new school. The board faced an outcry in 2018 when it tried to condemn part of the Stoneleigh estate next door, which is preserved under a conservation easement. Efforts to use the nearby Ashbridge Memorial Park were halted by a long-standing deed restriction. An attempt to use another nearby property also fizzled, while other lots were deemed unsuitable.

» READ MORE: Residents fight Lower Merion Schools plan to acquire beloved park

So district officials turned to Bennett’s grounds and home. Though the district has already taken the home through eminent domain, Bennett has a lease to live there through May 31.

Eminent domain — or the ability of the government to pay landowners to seize their private property for public use — is a power “inherent to the government,” said Matthew Hovey, a municipal attorney with the High Swartz law firm that represents clients in the area.

Typically, Hovey said, the power is used as a last resort as it can prove “politically unpopular” and may lead to costly and lengthy legal challenges.

What’s paid to a property owner is determined by the local government, basing the offer on expert opinions, Hovey said. The landowner then has the ability to appeal the amount in court.

In Lower Merion’s case, the district paid more than $12.9 million total — including the $9.9 million to Bennett — for the two properties slated for fields. The second property faces Montgomery Avenue and contains a cottage that would be razed.

The district says the acquisition fulfills the need for more athletic fields in the township’s comprehensive plan. District spokesperson Amy Buckman said the new fields would also be a shorter bus ride away for Black Rock Middle School’s students than fields elsewhere in the district, freeing the short-staffed bus drivers to complete more routes in the afternoons.

Plans for the Oakwell site include a baseball diamond and a softball diamond, overlaid by two full-size multisport fields, and two half-size practice fields for field hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and ultimate Frisbee, Buckman said.

“The Lower Merion Board of School Directors and administration strongly believe that every child in our district deserves the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities that will enhance their social emotional growth and connection to their school community,” Buckman said. “For many of our students, participation in athletics supports these goals.”

Buckman noted the district has invested additional “significant capital” in designing the project, moving through the township’s approval process and developing the land. While school board members and the township continue discussions, “no viable alternate locations for fields have been presented,” she said.

“While LMSD understands that some neighbors are concerned about having athletic fields for children near their homes, we believe that providing ample opportunities for children from our community to practice, play, compete and learn serves a greater good,” Buckman said.

The school district plans to keep the estate’s main house as a Class II Historical Resource, though a softball field will end feet from its walls. Under township code, Class I receives higher protection from demolition. Bennett fears the home will fall into disrepair and eventually have to be razed.

The district has said it will remove 462 of 691 trees — some centuries old — which has rankled the project’s critics. Buckman noted the district plans to plant more than what will be cut down — adding more than 400 deciduous trees and 200 evergreens, as well as shrubs and perennials, around the borders of the fields for the newly opened middle school about half a mile away.

Opponents say the 6-foot new trees can’t replace the heritage trees that dot Oakwell’s grounds.

“Can you imagine they’re taking this down?” Bennett said, pointing to an oak he said is hundreds of years old and whose canopy spreads wide across a field. He’s also worried that a smoke tree, planted in tribute to his deceased son, Matthew, and where Matthew’s ashes are scattered, will be removed.

The Oakwell estate encompasses a 1922 mansion and lush surrounding grounds — designed by the famed Olmsted Brothers — in Villanova, carved out of the original 65-acre Stoneleigh estate. The land was originally purchased in 1877 by a Pennsylvania Railroad Co. executive, and both properties were once owned by the Bodine family, who made their fortune at the helm of the United Gas Improvement Co.

Bennett said an arborist verified the grounds contain not only hundreds of old-growth trees but 114 heritage trees, which can be notable for their uniqueness, age, size, or association with a historical event. Oakwell also drains into the watersheds for Darby, Gulph, and Mill Creeks.

Stoneleigh was acquired in 1932 by the chemical-industry billionaire Haas family who donated to Natural Lands — one of Pennsylvania’s oldest and largest conservation nonprofits — in 2016 for preservation.

The nonprofit had spent two years creating a just-opened public garden when the Lower Merion School District moved to condemn at least part of the property in 2018, prompting an outcry that led to the passage of state legislation preventing government entities from seizing land under conservation easement without court approval.

» READ MORE: Lower Merion's new public garden already threatened by middle school plan

As a result of the Stoneleigh resistance, the school district looked elsewhere and purchased 7½ acres on Spring Mill Road for the fields, only to find out that land contained wetlands that would make it too expensive to develop.

» READ MORE: Lower Merion schools no longer interested in acquiring Stoneleigh

So it turned to Bennett’s Oakwell.

Bennett said he learned from a real estate broker in the summer of 2018 that the Lower Merion School District was interested in the property, so he reached out to neighboring Villanova University to see if it would be interested in buying the estate as a way of preserving it. The district sent Bennett an offer in October that a lawsuit he later filed said contained “many unfavorable contingencies.”

The lawsuit, which he later dropped, said that Bennett and his wife, Nance Di Rocco, had reached an agreement with Villanova to buy the property for $12 million. It then alleges the district went to Villanova’s president, the Rev. Peter Donahue, and told him that the district valued the property at $8 million.

Villanova eventually reached an agreement of sale for $9.65 million with Bennett on Oct. 16, 2018, to buy Oakwell. According to Bennett, the university planned to use it as a retreat and keep most of it intact. A settlement was scheduled for Jan. 4, 2019.

» READ MORE: Homeowners fight Lower Merion schools’ takeover of their property

But weeks before that settlement, Bennett said, he was visited by then Lower Merion Superintendent Robert Copeland and a district real estate agent, and they discussed the sale of the land. Bennett informed Copeland he already had an agreement with Villanova (Khalid Mumin replaced Copeland as superintendent in 2021). The district has disputed some of Bennett’s account.

Regardless, days later, the school board announced publicly it would condemn two properties — Oakwell and a three-acre parcel adjoining it on West Montgomery Avenue — and pay nearly $13 million to the owners.

Bennett went to court in February 2019 to fight the proceedings but dropped the suit as legal bills mounted. He still hopes to prevent the estate from being used for the fields.

For now, the township’s zoning hearing board is mulling a number of appeals filed by neighborhood opponents. A hearing scheduled last month on the matter was put off as attorneys sought to consolidate some of the issues raised by opponents of the district’s plan to avoid a number of separate public hearings. There was no date on when a decision might be made. Residents who have filed appeals raise legal questions about district plans for historic buildings and cutting down trees.

Lower Merion residents like John Willis plan to fight on. Willis noted the long history of the estate, including the brick walls to the greenhouse and garden complex designed in 1901 by noted Philadelphia architect Frank Miles Day. Willis pointed out an oak on the grounds, saying an arborist dated it to the time of the American Revolution.

“That tree will be cut down by the school district if their plans go forward,” Willis said.