Swim club saved from development

UPPER DUBLIN » A true testament to the power of community recently played out when a group of 20 families banded together to save the Fort Washington Swim & Tennis Club.

After 56 years in operation, the private club at 1003 Farm Lane in the Ambler section of the township was on the brink of being sold to a home builder when members of the “home of the sharks” and the granddaughter of the man who opened the pool Memorial Day 1961 set out to keep it open.

Drew Sunderlin, who took over operation of the club in 1985, had moved out of state, and under a prior agreement was about to sell to developer John Westrum.

Sunderlin notified members of the club in the summer of 2017 “that he would need to sell the pool to Westrum, who had the right of first refusal,” and the club would close at the end of the summer of 2018, said Harm Scherpbier, who led the effort to bring families together to jointly fund the Fort Investors Group LLC, which bought the club for an undisclosed amount Dec. 20.

Scherpbier and Ginny Cairo Vitella, whose grandfather John Cairo built the pool and whose father, Frank Cairo, operated it for many years, “started to think about how we could keep the pool open,” he said. “We had to get Westrum’s approval; he needed to be on board.”

While Scherpbier worked on finding the funding and setting up the LLC, Vitella, who “had the Westrum connection, was very involved in the negotiations,” he said.

The blast email from Sunderlin, who had taken over the club from her father, “was like a punch in the gut to the members and the community,” Vitella said. The Westrum and Cairo families “have a long history,” she said, so she contacted Westrum and “said the members were shocked and might be interested in saving the club, and he said, ‘let’s talk.’”

“He was always open to negotiations and a deal,” Vitella said. “His attitude is ‘I hope it’s successful.’ I think John had a sense of community. At the end of the day he’s better off than he was before.”

Westrum connection

While still a student at Bucknell University, Westrum said, his father, a developer who built a house in Upper Dublin for John Cairo and his wife, Angela, was approached by Cairo to see if he had any interest in “excess property” around the swim club, John Westrum said. “My dad said it was too small for him, but he had a son in college who might be interested in getting into the [building] business.”

When John Cairo approached him, he “knew nothing about the business,” Westrum said. “We cultivated a relationship and I purchased the property” from Cairo and his son, Frank, “when it got the approvals” — it was rezoned from A-Residential to Bresidential, he said.

“When I first met Frank, he said, ‘It’s not going to happen,’” Westrum recalled. Frank and his wife, Mary Jo, were also Bucknell grads “and I think that had a great impact,” he said. “It was ironic. Sometimes you need a break in life.

“I had no money, but agreed to pay more money than it was worth if they provided help financing it,” Westrum said. Westrum Development Company was established in 1987 and he built Highland Park.

When an old summer camp on Farm Lane bordering the swim club was up for sale, he had “made enough money to see if I could continue to build there,” so he bought the day camp, Westrum said. An agreement was made for Westrum to buy the club’s original parking lot to build homes and turn the camp into a parking lot for the swim club, which he leased back to the club for nothing “as long as it was maintained, and if the club was ever to be sold, they had to offer it to me first,” he said.

Almost 30 years later, Sunderlin contacted Westrum to say he was ready to sell.

“It’s a small site, but I was not going to give it up,” Westrum said. Throughout the summer he generated some development plans, which he pitched to the neighbors, at the same time “working with the people who wanted to save the Fort,” he said.

“They were very passionate about what they wanted to do,” he said. “I decided to allow them to buy the club from Drew and lease them the lot for a small amount of rent. I have the right to buy the property if they are ever not able to function as a community pool.

“It’s a community-based intention I didn’t want to get in the way of. Rather than taking something away, I would be part of something good for the community.

“It’s really a good example of community, a business person and a long-standing family relationship that had to have the alignment of stars.”

The deal

“Once Westrum was on board, it meant we could find money to buy the club,” Scherpbier said. “I talked with a number of families — current and prior members who almost all said it was important to our kids — and within two to three months, we had the money required to buy the pool.”

In the spring, major repairs for the pool and work on the tennis courts will begin for the long term, he said. About 150 families and individual subscribers and tennis members belong to the club, “and we plan to expand that number this spring,” he said.