Fairways and Open Spaces

Easy Flow From Room to Room, Golf Course to Lake in Columbia Subdivision

When Sharon Glennen-Higgins and her husband, Wayne Higgins, first looked at their house in Creighton's Run 16 years ago, they were attracted by the privacy afforded by the woods that bordered the back yard.

An 18-hole golf course was in the works behind the Columbia subdivision, but it had been delayed for so long that nobody expected it to be built for years, they were told.

Scarcely had the Higgins family moved in when bulldozers appeared, knocking down the woods to build the Fairway Hills Golf Club, Glennen-Higgins said.

That was a surprise, but the family nevertheless fell in love with their neighborhood.

"We're just really comfortable here," Higgins said. "The golf course has been a good neighbor."

Although residents initially protested the course's construction on the open space circling their homes, the resulting relationship has been better than anticipated, he said.

For instance, Fairway Hills allows locals to walk on the course before it opens in the morning, a perk that resident Mary Beth Hasson uses.

For Hasson, a reading teacher who arrived with her young family at Creighton's Run in 1986, the house and neighborhood were a welcome find. She and her husband, caring for a 2-year-old and unable to locate a suitable house, had decided to give up on the search for a while when a real estate agent took them to the development.

Creighton's Run, a cul-de-sac community secluded from other subdivisions by the golf course and Route 108, dates to 1979. Most of the homes are four-bedroom traditional models with large master bedrooms and master baths.

Hasson immediately liked the beautiful condition of the house they saw, as well as its size, which was larger than other homes she had toured. She also warmed to the neighborhood.

"I like that it's close to everything," she said, including Merriweather Post Pavilion. In the summer, she can sit on her porch and listen to Merriweather concerts.

Her back yard, where she enjoys gardening, borders the golf course and overlooks a pond on the course. "We've got a nice situation," she said.

Neighbors in Creighton's Run remark on the convenience of being able to walk a few hundred yards down a shady, winding bike path to Centennial Park, with its lake, paths, tennis courts, picnic tables and free summer concerts.

"The location is perfect," said Peggy Gaegler, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years. "It's upscale but affordable. That combination made it the right match for us. It's fabulous to be close to Lake Centennial."

The Columbia location is a good halfway point, Higgins said, between his job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Prince George's County and his wife's job at Towson University, near Baltimore.

Because of soaring energy prices, Higgins said he appreciates the 7 1/2 -foot ceilings in his house. He calls them "energy-crisis ceilings" because they are lower than the nine-footers in many more-recent homes.

Glennen-Higgins said the house, built at the beginning of the era of open-space design, has rooms that flow easily into each other, although the couple did take down a wall between the dining room and the kitchen. After they adopted two children, they added a sunroom to the back of the house.

"We decided we like our neighborhood too much, and we liked the schools, so we decided to stay put," Higgins said.

Susie and Buddy Muse, who have lived in the neighborhood for five years, find that the sense of being cut off from other subdivisions makes the neighbors tighter-knit than in other communities where they have lived.

"I know a lot of my neighbors, unlike in other neighborhoods," Susie Muse said.

Gaegler concurred. "We have this trusted neighbor system going on," she said, in which residents watch out for one another.

She also likes the look of the neighborhood, with its well-kept lawns and landscaping.

It might be private, she said, and almost never seen by outsiders, but that doesn't stop residents from keeping the area pristine.

"Everyone takes a lot of pride in their property," she said.