Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the Orange County Planning Department’s “Final and Binding Determination” letter on Union Grove Farm’s various project elements shared on Wednesday.
More than two hundred people crowded into the meeting room of the Whitted Building in Hillsborough on May 28 for a community meeting on the future of the property that once was Maple View Farm. Throughout the event, the crowd cheered and applauded emphatically as speakers voiced opposition toward Union Grove Farm and its majority owner, Greg Bohlen, for his plans to further commercialize the land.
A well-known landmark of rural Orange County, Maple View Farm was run by the husband-and-wife pair Bob and Chris Nutter for more than 50 years before their deaths in 2019 and 2015, respectively. The Nutters granted the Triangle Land Conservancy a conservation easement over the farm in 1995, which prohibits the construction of new buildings and structures in the designated area that aren’t for the sole purpose of agriculture. Union Grove’s acquisition of the farm in 2022 was subject to this easement. Since buying the land, Bohlen has established a vineyard on the property and has committed to the goal of regenerative agriculture, even opening a Center for Regenerative Agriculture to educate visitors on the benefits of these practices…