A judge has authorized the sale of an Arlington Girl Scouts camp in New Hampshire to a developer, but objectors are appealing, arguing the property could still operate as a camp and that the trustees failed to follow the terms of the trust requiring them to seek another organization to operate it.
A Sept. 2 decree signed by Middlesex Probate and Family Court Judge Carla A. Salvucci says the trustees of the Camp Menotomy Trust have the authority to sell the property following a nearly yearlong legal dispute.
Objectors who spoke with YourArlington filed an appeal to this decision Sept. 14.
Camp Menotomy, which opened as a Girl Scouts camp in 1939, is a 95-acre property on Lake Winnipesaukee in Meredith, N.H. Menotomy was the original name for what is now Arlington.
It was leased to the organization overseeing Arlington Girl Scouts from 1967 to 2023, most recently Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. The Girl Scouts ended their lease in 2023 as part of a financial decision.
The trustees then entered into an $18 million purchase and sale agreement with Menotomy Development, a company associated with residential developer Jeremy Martin of Lakes Region Design Group. Martin plans to build seven single-family homes and keep a portion of the property undeveloped.
The legal dispute centers on a 1961 trust established to maintain the property as a camp for girls ages 7 to 18.
Although the property is intended for Arlington Girl Scouts, the trust allows the trustees to rent it to another group for camping and retain the funds as “camperships” for Arlington girls in the event there is no Arlington Girl Scouts organization or similar organization. If no other organization can be found to use the property for camping, the trust permits a sale.
YourArlington detailed the original conflict in an October 2025 article.
The trustees subsequently filed a petition Oct. 14, 2025, saying they had considered whether another organization could operate the camp and retained two professionals to assess the feasibility of finding a renter. After consulting with the Girl Scouts, the trustees agreed that renting would not be feasible and decided to sell the property.
Opponents of the sale dispute that conclusion, pointing to two potential camp operators who have made efforts to lease or buy the property.
Eric Carlson, who has operated Camp Quinebarge in Moultonborough, N.H., for 13 years, said he first contacted the property’s listing agent in February 2024 after seeing the property listed for sale and offered to buy or rent it for use as a camp. Communications sent by counsel for the Meredith Neck and Islands Alliance (MerNIA), a nonprofit that aims to protect the area, state that the property was publicly listed for about 21 hours between Feb. 9 and Feb. 10, 2024.
The trustees’ petition and communications from MerNIA contain conflicting dates for Carlson’s initial contact. The petition lists Feb. 13, 2025, while Carlson and MerNIA identify Feb. 10, 2024.
Carlson’s third attempt to negotiate, on July 18, 2025, proposed operating a summer camp, paying the trust $110,000 in annual rent, making several million dollars in capital improvements, providing up to $600,000 in annual camperships for Arlington-area girls and assuming responsibility for property taxes for a lease term of 30 years.
In addition to Carlson, the Station Foundation, another objector, made an offer to lease the property for camping in October 2025.
Adam Hamel, an attorney representing Carlson and Trowbridge in their challenge to the sale, said in a statement to YourArlington that the July proposal was not disclosed to the Probate Court. “The failure to acknowledge that offer and to unnecessarily forfeit the charitable purpose of the Trust would be a miscarriage of justice,” Hamel wrote.
Matthew Leonard, an attorney representing the trustees, said he was unable to comment on ongoing matters.
The property’s feasibility as a camp is further called into question by a disagreement between Carlson and Martin over the cost of camp renovations.
One of the professionals the trustees’ retained, Jeremy Martin, whose company had agreed to purchase the property, estimated that bringing the camp’s facilities to a competitive level would cost $8.5 million.
Carlson estimated that improvements would cost about $1.8 million – roughly one-fifth of Martin’s estimate.
Carlson said he based this number on his experience operating a camp and on recent construction projects at Camp Quinebarge.
“You had the person who was the buyer of the property, the developer, a clear conflict of interest,” Carlson said. “He’s a developer of luxury homes, not a camp operator, providing an estimate on what it’s going to cost to make a camp usable.”
Martin’s spokesperson said Martin was “not very comfortable giving interviews” and instead provided a written statement in which Martin said the camp structures are “obsolete and physically deteriorating” and that bringing the property up to modern camping standards would likely require millions of dollars in design, engineering, permitting and construction.
The second professional the trustees cited was real estate appraiser Wesley G. Reeks, whose study compared Menotomy with six recent New Hampshire camp sales.
MerNIA disputed the analysis in a November 2025 letter written by their legal counsel on behalf of the organization to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, arguing it evaluated the property primarily as real estate development rather than as a camping operation.
MerNIA also said conversations with camp directors across New England revealed strong enrollment and waitlists at well-run camps.
Jessie Trowbridge, a former Camp Menotomy camper and an objector in the case, echoed this sentiment. “Every year when I go to sign my kids up for Girl Scout camp with Eastern Mass., we’re almost instantly on a wait list,” Trowbridge said.
MerNIA also has raised questions about the proposed sale and how the property was publicly marketed.
In the same communication, MerNIA asserted that the property was placed on the market on Feb. 9, 2024, after the proposed purchase and sale agreement was initially signed. The letter states that the Purchase and Sale Addendum 1 was drawn up on Jan. 26, 2024, and the agreement was entered into on Jan. 28, 2024.
A separate letter from MerNIA to the New Hampshire Department of Justice implied that this was a behind-the-scenes negotiation.
The proposed sale has also raised environmental concerns.
Mark Ishkanian, the chairman of the board of the Lake Winnipesaukee Alliance, said the property is part of the last 10% of undeveloped land on the lake and that any development can affect water quality. He cited increased phosphorus levels and declining water clarity over the past 40 years.
“The language of that trust explicitly reflects the settlor’s intent at the time,” said Bette Higley, a neighbor to the property and MerNIA board member. “You can’t just decide that you’re not going to follow it.”
For former campers, the conflict is also about whether a camp that has served generations of Arlington girls can exist elsewhere.
“There are other Girl Scout camps. I get that,” said Karen Bennett, a former Girl Scout and camper at Camp Menotomy. “But it is an extremely special place. I say that if you haven’t been there, you don’t know.”
As the dispute persists, Trowbridge says she considers her children to be the real objectors – she just represents them because they are minors.
“They begged for years to go back to Menotomy, like every year,” Trowbridge said. “Once those places, places like Menotomy, are gone, once we’ve turned them all into developments with multi-million-dollar homes, they don’t come back.”
This story, published Sept. 27, 2026, is part of a partnership between YourArlington and the Boston University Department of Journalism’s Newsroom program.
