One recent evening, just before sunset, a friend and I decided to swing by Sagamore, the beautiful and historic horse farm in Baltimore County up for sale at $16.5 million. It would be great, I thought, if some billionaire bought the place and kept it equestrian.
But before I go on about Sagamore, let me tell you about the last time I suggested — and only somewhat whimsically — what a superwealthy person might do with his or her money.
It was not for the purchase of private property, such as a horse farm. It was for a project of public benefit.
I asked Michael Bloomberg, business titan and former New York City mayor, to pluck $1 billion from his net worth of $93 billion and give it to Baltimore Community Lending so that the nonprofit could finance the conversion of thousands of vacant houses into affordable homes.
Good cause, right?
Bloomberg had been generous in donations to his alma mater, the Johns Hopkins University.
But $1 billion channeled through BCL — and perhaps Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake — would accelerate the conversion of vacants and transform certain neighborhoods, especially in West Baltimore.
So, starting in 2020, I made multiple appeals to Bloomberg in The Baltimore Sun and through social media. A mutual acquaintance sent Bloomberg at least one of the columns.
As semi-expected, we never heard from the guy.
By now, he is 84 years old and his net worth has grown to $103 billion.
What can I say? It would have been huge to see Michael Bloomberg — or any billionaire — backing the renovation of a few thousand rowhouses in Baltimore for working families otherwise too low on cash to afford them.
But either Mr. B didn’t get the message or he has other plans for his fortune.
Or maybe I should have filled out a form to ask for the donation.
Or maybe, as a couple of readers told me, I had no business even suggesting what another man might do with his money.
As to the latter, I say, “Oh, yeah? Why not?”
I have no hesitation calling them out and challenging them.
And I am not alone in finding grotesque the billionaires who keep accumulating wealth when they hardly pay taxes and their country has so many problems that need solving or good ideas that need funding.
So back to Sagamore Farm.
Do I dare suggest that a billionaire buy it?
It’s not like low-income families are going to be able to move there. If I’m going to use this space to appeal for a billionaire’s cash, there should be a public benefit.
In fact, there would be such a benefit in new life for Sagamore Farm; it just won’t be as obvious as 10,000 renovated rowhouses.
Some background: Sagamore covers 524 acres in the Worthington Valley; it’s been home and last resting place of champion race horses, including Native Dancer.
During our sunset visit, it was very quiet there — the farm mostly well-maintained, but clearly dormant, a long way from its 20th Century heyday, or even its brief, 21st Century resurrection.
Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr. owned the farm for the longest time, from 1933 until 1986, and hundreds of mares and stallions were born there, raised there and trained to race there. It was a bright gold star on the map of the world’s horse farms and, with Country Life and Merryland, the best known of Maryland’s.
Sagamore Farm is an elaborate compound of barns and stables with red roofs, paddocks, a training track and miles of white board fence. It’s still a beautiful place, though no longer in operation.
Vanderbilt sold the farm to developer James Ward in 1986. Two decades later, Kevin Plank, the CEO and founder of Under Armour, bought Sagamore and made improvements with an ambition to get the farm back on the thoroughbred map.
“I fundamentally believe that we’ll deliver the next Triple Crown winner,” Plank told Baltimore magazine in 2011. “I want that identity where people turn on the Kentucky Derby and say, ‘Is there a Sagamore horse? I like Sagamore horses, they are tough and gritty every time they run.’”
Just a few years after he bought the farm, Plank and Sagamore made some noise, with longshot filly Shared Account upsetting the field and winning a Breeders’ Cup turf race at Churchill Downs. That was in 2010, back when Plank, with his numerous business ventures and big plans, showed signs of being Baltimore’s Bruce Wayne.
But the situation changed in the ensuing years and Plank’s ambitions in horse racing flattened out. Under Armour was struggling through a tough period marked by plummeting stock and federal investigations. Plank told The Sun in 2020 he was ending the equestrian operation after an “amazing” run to grow corn and rye for his Sagamore Spirit whiskeys and to house several retired horses.
Last year, Plank put the farm up for sale at $22 million. “It’s time for the next steward to carry the torch,” he said at the time.
The price has dropped to $16.5 million.
Sagamore is a special place within a valley protected by conservation restrictions that, while limiting the possibilities for more development in Baltimore County, provide the entire region with what is arguably a public benefit — a belt of green beyond the Beltway. It’s what real estate agents and travel writers call an amenity.
One spring evening 50 years ago, a longtime Baltimorean picked me up at my apartment in the city and drove out to Sagamore. We got there in maybe 30 minutes, and I was astonished how quickly we had moved from urban concrete and asphalt to rural pasture and forest. We pulled to the side of a road and walked to a fence line; some horses came to us under the moonlight.
A half century later, you can pretty much have the same experience because of county zoning and because of vigilant valley conservationists, and because the wealthy owners of the land have remained stewards of it.
Sagamore could be a working horse farm again, even as the thoroughbred industry faces big challenges and uncertainty about the future. Maryland could experience a racing renaissance with a new Pimlico Race Course, the Preakness contract with NBC and the state’s deeper involvement in the horse industry.
“We are not just looking for a buyer, we are looking for the next great steward,” said a spokesman for Plank’s Sagamore Ventures. “Sagamore has the bones to remain a working horse training facility, or to become an equine and agricultural learning center that keeps this land purposeful for the next generation. That’s the outcome we are hoping for.”
I hope that happens.
I’ll root — and only somewhat whimsically — for a billionaire to come along and give Sagamore another go.
If not, then maybe Kevin Plank could establish Sagamore as a horse rescue, something that will be especially needed should the thoroughbred industry continue to contract.
Beyond racing, there is big horse love in Maryland. Maybe Sagamore could be open, on a limited scale, to Marylanders who love horses of all breeds — there were more than 100,000 of them in the last state equine census — and need to board them and would favor a beautiful and historic place to ride them.
More photos of Sagamore Farm at sunset.
Dan Rodricks writes weekly for Baltimore Fishbowl. He can be reached at djrodricks@gmail.com
Sagamore made much more sense as a traing center than Shamrock or even Laurel. Mainly, because it is close to Pimlico and its storied historical connection. Many say that the neighbors wouldn’t stand for it but the Woodbine neighbors didn’t want a Shamrock training center either. ( and now that that place is up for grabs, and NOT in Land Preservation, who knows what will go there). After the way that the Stronachs treated MD Racing, giving them $48 million for a training center (with severe environmental issues) irks quite a few of us. Not to mention it is 45 minutes to an hour from Pimlico. That makes for a long tiring day for a horse and its crew as Pimlico is supposedly going to be a ship in only facility. Perhaps, someone will buy Sagamore and rent out the stalls to horsemen who don’t want to make that exhausting trip.
BTW, the photos, of Sagamore at sunset are stunning. But the “walkway” and the “largest barn” is actually a 1/4 mile INSIDE training track, for exercising in bad weather.