The fight over Belward Farm’s development isn’t the first time the farm’s family has been upset with Johns Hopkins University in the decades since the property was donated to the school.
Elizabeth Banks, a farmer and former schoolteacher, donated her 108-acre property in 1989 and allowed for 30 acres to be developed during her lifetime. Hopkins only had to leave as a thick grove of trees between the development and her side of the property, where she remained with her cattle until her death in 2005.
In 1989, the financially shaky Hopkins said it needed the land to help finance its future development on the farm.
