NEWS

Maryland’s Eastern Shore draws thousands of weekend adventurers with its laid-back lifestyle, historic towns, and the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay. Now there’s an opportunity to find a year-round waterfront home on the Eastern Shore in a close-knit community that’s within easy reach of Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Annapolis.

That place, Gibson’s Grant, is now home to several hundred people who love its friendliness, convenience, and small-town charm. “Gibson’s Grant is the best-kept secret on the Eastern Shore,” said one recent homebuyer, Annette Potts. “There is such a sense of community here. You can talk with neighbors sitting on their front porches, walking their pets, in the small neighborhood parks, or just picking up the mail.”

In addition to maximizing opportunities for spontaneous social interaction, Gibson’s Grant offers a wide variety of organized activities throughout the year including holiday celebrations, happy hours and wine tasting, bonfires, fishing, kids’ swimming lessons, kayaking, fantasy football, and more.

Residents gather every day in Gibson’s Grant community clubhouse, a repurposed century-old dairy barn featuring a kitchenette, spacious fitness center, swimming pool and sundeck, and open-air patio with a firepit made from 300-year-old bricks. For children, there’s a woodsy tot lot and outdoor kiddie pool. People of all ages enjoy fishing, crabbing, and watching the sunset from the community pier that juts into the Chester River.

Situated at the confluence of the Chester River and Macum Creek, Gibson’s Grant has a total of 280 homesites plus 55 acres of wetlands that are managed by the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center. There are two miles of nature trails through the wetlands and along the river banks, with direct links to the popular six-mile Cross-Island Trail. The Center sponsors birding and nature walks, in addition to maintaining bluebird boxes throughout the conservation area. Living at Gibson’s Grant means seeing blue heron, osprey, and even bald eagles almost every day.

“Everything about Gibson’s Grant is planned to bring people together in an authentic, friendly community,” said Karen McJunkin, a representative of the Gibson’s Grant development team, which comprises four of the largest and most established residential and hospitality development firms in the Washington-Baltimore corridor.

“We started with neotraditional design, using three classic Eastern Shore home styles: Colonial, Arts and Crafts, and Victorian,” McJunkin went on. “To create a small-town feel and facilitate social interaction, all homes have garages in the back and brick sidewalks in front and are close to or facing pocket parks.”

While it can feel like it’s a world apart, Gibson’s Grant is just minutes from shops, schools, restaurants, services, and everything else residents might need. “We don’t have to leave for anything – it’s all here,” commented another resident, Emmy Stickle. Residents are pleased with local public schools’ caring teachers and personalized attention. There are locally owned shops with friendly proprietors, grocery and hardware stores, and a wide variety of restaurants. The 63 fashion-forward stores that make up Queenstown Premium Outlets are five minutes away, and a new Harris Teeter grocery store is under construction a mile away.

Just three minutes from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Gibson’s Grant provides the “best of both worlds.” “When we lived in Virginia, it took 40 minutes to get to my job just five miles away,” said Kim Mannion. “Now the Kent Island commuter bus gets me all the way to work in Washington in only 50 minutes with no hassle.” Annapolis is just 15 minutes away; it takes only 30 minutes to reach Fort Meade. In summer, residents can reach the Atlantic beaches in 90 minutes.

“Gibson’s Grant provides incredible value,” noted development partner Gary Koch. The community’s final phase provides waterfront living at lower cost than non-waterfront homesites east of the Bay Bridge. “By moving just a few miles away, you can have the waterfront home of your dreams and the relaxing lifestyle that you deserve,” he added.

These last 40 homebuilding sites offer panoramic views of the wide Chester River. They include waterfront lots priced from the low $400,000s and waterview sites priced from $210,000. A three-story model home is now open for viewing. Buyers can work with their own builders to create custom or semi-custom homes.

Gibson’s Grant has an English-language history dating to 1656. The development team acquired the property’s remaining 85 acres, by then a working farm, in 2008. The tract included the historic Stoopley Gibson manor home, which has been lovingly renovated by its new owners. This storied Eastern Shore history is echoed in Gibson’s Grant’s neotraditional design.

The Gibson’s Grant Development Partners are made up of Elm Street Development, Bozzuto Inc., Koch Associates, and Coastal South. Elm Street, Bozzuto, and Koch are three of the region’s largest and most successful privately-owned developers and builders; Coastal South is the premier hospitality developer in the mid-shore region of Maryland. Over the last four decades, the Gibson’s Grant development team has collectively developed hundreds of distinguished communities with tens of thousands of homes and apartments, hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail and commercial space, and numerous hotels and event facilities. To learn more about Gibson’s Grant, visit: https://www.gibsonsgrant.com/.