Our Story
How We Got Here
Since 2012, we have been fighting to protect Crystal Spring Farm and Forest, the last, best forest in Annapolis.
THE JOURNEY
Back in 2012, the threat of large-scale development loomed large to Crystal Spring Farm, aka the Katherine Property. This threat galvanized a small group of friends interested in local conservation, inspiring us to form the "Friends of Crystal Spring Forest," an informal advocacy group focused on stopping the massive proposed development. At the time, the project was known as the "Village at Crystal Spring," and the Friends were the lone voices crying foul about a process that lacked pubic engagement and disregarded the environmental and social impacts to our community. Several other local environmental groups had already given up opposing the development. Through our successful social media campaign and a combination of direct outreach and advocacy, we shifted the dialogue about the natural values of Crystal Spring Forest and promoted the idea of land protection into the forefront of public discourse. Eventually, other environmental groups joined us in leading the charge to stop the development.
For several years, we continued the struggle and were able to stop different iterations of the development. Things quieted down in 2017 after one major investor withdrew. Awareness of the project waned. Then in 2019, the developers submitted a new proposal and rebranded it under the name, “The Village at Providence Point.” This rebranding came at a time when Annapolis, along with the rest of the world, was distracted by global and national crises, enabling the new project to fly under the radar of much of the community. This prompted us to heed the call to action once again, and so in late 2020 we founded Crab Creek Conservancy, Inc., a registered Maryland nonprofit organization. In 2021, we received tax exempt status as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization from the Internal Revenue Service. Forming a charity has enabled us to continue our work more effectively and to broaden the scope of our program areas based on our interest in conserving the water and forest resources of the Crab Creek watershed.