Please Don’t Let Developers Buy This Iconic Massachusetts Summer Camp for Sale and Build Condos

I was deeply saddened to hear that the summer camp that I called home for at least 12 years of my youth (age 5-17) was for sale for $2.95 million dollars.

The "for sale" sign did not hurt as badly as the suggested "development opportunity" language did on the listing. To see the tennis courts, splash pads, mini Fenway park, playgrounds, and other unique parts of this epic summer camp, see below.

To whoever buys the 56+-acre former summer camp:

Don't build condos. Don't build a cul-de-sac and rent out homes. Keep this a summer camp. Please.

Cederdale Groveland Summer Day Camp has been a part of my life, as well as thousands and THOUSANDS of others in Northern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire. To have it be whipped away for a money-making scheme pains every part of my heart.

I called Cederdale Groveland home, as many other kids did, too. It was a summer day camp that bridged outside towns together and created lifelong friendships I would not have if not for this summer day camp.

Going to a regional middle school is nerve-racking for many. As a kid, you get used to your elementary school friends; the five to ten friends in your hometown that you see every day at school.

Well, going to a regional middle school and high school was not nerve-racking for me. For eight weeks every summer, I spent my entire day with different people. Not just my hometown friends.

I met other kids my age from various towns over from me. I learned from them. Those same kids would be in my regional middle school and high school. When I went to school for the first time with "strangers," they were not strangers. They were my summer camp family.

This summer camp let me, and so many like me, become the person we wanted to be. I got to experience athletics, archery, golf, drama and singing, arts and crafts, problem-solving, building campfires, and the most important lessons ever: how to treat other people, how to work with other people you do not know, and how to have fun as a kid.

To the person who will buy this 56+-acre land for almost three million dollars, give these life lessons and memories to others. Don't take them away.

I could write a 20-page autobiography of the memories I have at this camp, ranging from the first time I did a mudslide at the mini Fenway Park in a torrential downpour, my first theater performance in front of hundreds, my first fight, my first girlfriend, and so on.

I could also probably give you a handful of memories this place has given not just me, but my parents: singing along to Jim Croce on the way to camp, having them be proud of me at my first "parent's night," and having them help me negotiate my first job as a camp counselor.

When you take away this camp, you take away life lessons for kids and lasting memories for their parents.

To see the Cederdale Groveland Summer Day Camp as I remember it (and forever will), see below.