Cumberland Valley School District is growing so fast the district feels compelled to secure land for future projects before a current batch of school construction projects have been completed.

That sounds like good planning, in a district that serves the two fastest-growing municipalities in one of the fastest-growing counties in Pennsylvania.

But is it still good planning when the site the board has selected is a farm that was supposed to be preserved as open space in perpetuity? Or has the district just redefined "forever" as somewhere north of 35 years?

The questions arise from the board's 7-0 Jan. 22 vote to launch eminent domain proceedings for the 116-acre McCormick farm property off Route 11 about a mile west of the Route 114 interchange.

In such cases, the government - as long as it can show a strong public need for the land - usually wins, and the only fighting is over how much it pays.

But this might be different.

For one, the conservation easements are held by the Delaware County-based Natural Lands Trust, a group that is very serious about its mission of preserving open space in the face of development pressures.

It would be a party in any condemnation proceedings, in that it would have to be compensated for the easements that it holds.

Peter Williamson, vice president for conservation services at Natural Lands, said Thursday that his group has often worked with agencies like PennDOT and pipeline companies to grant rights-of-way for small portions of ground.

It has never been forced to negotiate the loss of an entire property, he said, so this could be more contentious.

"We hold a conservation easement on that property, the purpose of which is to keep it open and whole, and we intend to do everything we can to keep it that way," Williamson told PennLive this week.

It's not clear exactly what that could entail.

District officials have noted the deed for the farm has specific language stating that "once the property, or a portion thereof, is taken by condemnation, the conservation easement terminates automatically by operation of law."

Cumberland Valley hadn't filed a formal declaration of taking through Friday. But it is known that appraisals are being taken of the site, which is actually owned at present by the family of Ui Ung Lee.

The Lee family has been trying to sell the land for years. Efforts to reach them for this story were not successful.

Speaking for the district, school board President Michael Gossert argued that this is prudent planning in an area of the district that is seeing explosive growth.

"It's quite simple," Gossert said. "We're exploding and we need property, and this property is for sale.

"We can't shut the doors at 1,000 kids. We have to educate every kid who comes into our district... It makes it a lot easier if we have land sitting there ready for us to use."

It's also fairly close to Cumberland Valley's existing education park, home to the high school, district offices and Eagle View Middle School.

What's more, this particular ground, because it is encumbered by the easements, may come less expensively than other land in the Silver Spring / Hampden township development vortex.

And that's being a good fiduciary for the district's taxpayers, Gossert said.

The numbers back Gossert up.

According to the Cumberland County Planning Department, Silver Spring (2,185) and Hampden (1,874) townships ranked one-two among all county municipalities from 2006 through 2016 in new residential building permits issued.

Development pressure is only ramping up as new subdivision submissions county-wide surged last year to levels not seen since before the 2007-08 recession.

Here's the impact on Cumberland Valley schools, according to district spokeswoman Tracy Panzer.

Current student enrollment is 9,142 students, an increase of more than 1,700 since 2010. The district's three-year average growth rate is 2.22 percent or 200 students per year, a trend expected to continue for at least the next three to five years, Panzer said.

The three-year average growth rate of students living in Silver Spring Township is 3.61 percent per year.

There are no official plans for the farm yet, though Gossert said district officials like the flexibility that the ground would give them as they approach a time period where renovations might be needed to Eagle View.

As one hypothetical, the district could decide to find a new use for that building and put a new middle campus on the McCormick tract.

The problem is that all this good planning and sound financial practice is running smack-dab into local history, preservation politics and more than a little sentimentality.

The farm in question belonged to the McCormick family, who, 100 years ago, probably would have outranked Milton S. Hershey in the pantheon of midstate power players.

Vance McCormick was a one-time Harrisburg mayor, a bigtime Democratic Party power broker and close associate of President Woodrow Wilson's who helped to represent the U.S. in negotiations on the Treaty of Versailles.

Known as the "Home Farm," the family's Silver Spring tract was saved before preservation was cool by then-family trustees Charles and Brooks McCormick, who donated it to Natural Lands in 1983. The conservancy sold it to Lee a few years later with the conservation easements in place.

In the 35 years since, a string of car dealerships have sprouted along U.S. Route 11 to the west, and a large shopping plaza anchored by a Giant Foods store and a Sheetz lies to the east, at the corner of Routes 11 and 114.

Adjacent to the farm itself sits the village of Hogestown, one of the original beating hearts of Silver Spring, and an area that local residents are in the midst of their own efforts to revive.

Some worry that effort could be overwhelmed by a future school campus.

"We already have a traffic problem (in the village)," said Scott Mehring, of the Hogestown Heritage Committee.

"This would just magnify that probably ten-fold," he said, taking a crystal ball peek into the future. "People would move out, their houses would be sold, and pretty soon there's be nothing left of Hogestown."

That's especially so, some critics note, if a large residential development to the north of the McCormick ground, Gray Hawk Landing, would be permitted to gain access to Route 11 through the farm.

Local environmentalists, meanwhile, point to the virtues the open space provides for the Conodoguinet Creek coursing along the properties northern boundary.

And local historian Christine Musser said she's simply ticked off by the district's willingness to override history.

"What is this teaching kids about appreciating their culture?" she asked rhetorically in a recent interview. "This is what you do, because you have the power and the money to do it?"

In short, there's a lot to unpack here.

Cumberland Valley may have the legal high ground at the start.

According to Jeff Franklin, a Berks County attorney with expertise in property law, as long as the district has a reasonable basis for the condemnation, it can move on the land and extinguish any easements on it.

Aggrieved parties - in this case Natural Lands - would typically be fighting for dollars. Disagreements could eventually work their way into county court.

The question for CV is, whether the price will stay reasonable enough - including payments to the land owners and Natural Lands - to override concerns about breaking the open space promise.

Or will there be so much backlash to this taking that the board finds the prudent thing is to move on to other sites?

It's known that the tract has had other potential buyers looking at the site for uses in compliance with the easements, but those talks have apparently been put on hold pending the district's interest.

Panzer said the board is scheduled to discuss land acquisition issues in executive session during its regularly scheduled meeting Monday night.

It may hear from some critics of the farm deal, as well, in what could become on the midstate's more interesting land use battles of 2018.