Camp Bomazeen, a beloved Boy Scout camp on the shore of Belgrade’s Great Pond, is no longer actively for sale.

The Pine Tree Council of the Boy Scouts of America, the owners of the 330-acre camp, say they will listen to anyone interested in the property and have reached out to a local conservation alliance to gauge their interest in the site.

But regional scouting group officials also say they are no longer actively looking to sell Camp Bomazeen. Instead, they’ve resumed using it for some scouting activities and are currently contemplating the best use of the lakefront property moving forward.

That’s in sharp contrast to what Gary Savignano, scout executive of the southern-Maine based Pine Tree Council,  said only month ago in a letter to council members and the “Scouting America family.” In it, he said council officials, faced with harsh financial realities threatening the long-term viability of the council, had decided their best course of action was to sell off some properties considered “underutilized, difficult to maintain, and no longer provide the regular engagement or income necessary to support our core mission.”

Savignano went on to say in that March 19 letter, “As part of this effort, we have made the difficult decision to move forward with the sale of certain properties, including Camp Bomazeen.”

Camp officials had been at that point once before. The property was nearly sold in 2021 until the potential buyer pulled out  and the state Attorney General’s Office, joined by proponents of keeping Bomazeen a scout camp, filed a lawsuit that ended up before the state’s highest court.

The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the Belgrade camp property can be sold only if the proceeds from its sale are used to support camping activities for Boy Scouts in central Maine, not to pay off some of its debt as council officials had hoped to do. That ruling was based on the 1944 deed when the Scouts were given the property “for uses that support camping activities for Boy Scouts in Central Maine.”

After the lawsuit was resolved, Savignano, in the letter to council members, said because the court had determined the council owned Camp Bomazeen and had the legal right to sell it, it was reviewing proposals to ensure the property could be sold in a way that could comply with the court’s requirements. He said, in an interview, the council’s intent then was to sell it and use the proceeds in a way contemplated by the Supreme Court, including the requirement the proceeds support camping activities for Boy Scouts in central Maine.

The property was never put back on the real estate market.

This past week, Savignano said the council now is not actively looking to sell the camp.

“If people would like to talk about the property, we’re willing to listen,” he said. “It is still one of our camp properties, and we are still utilizing it as the board contemplates the best usage for the property moving forward.”

That March letter also noted the council was then in discussions with the 7 Lakes Alliance to explore a potential sale. The alliance is a Belgrade-based nonprofit conservation organization that owns properties and has conservation easements on others for conservation purposes in the Belgrade Lakes region.

7 Lakes officials recently confirmed the organization is interested in the property and has had some discussions about either buying it or partnering with another organization to put a conservation easement in place to preserve the property roughly as it is now.

However, they noted no deal or agreement is in place for either of those options for the property, a mix of waterfront including some beach land, as well as woods and marshland on both sides of Horse Point Road.

“We’ve had conversations with Pine Tree Council, we certainly share the vision of having the camp being forever available to Scouts and being forever undeveloped,” said Noah Pollock, land conservation director for 7 Lakes. “We could be interested in playing a role if it makes sense. I’m not sure what that role would be, but we certainly share that vision of having it be undeveloped. There’s a lot of conservation value there. We’ve had conversations but nothing is set, there’s no contract, or letter of intent.”

Dan McCarron, of Portside Real Estate Group’s Lakepoint Real Estate in Belgrade, said if the waterfront property were to be clear of any court or deed restrictions, he has no doubt it would attract significant interest, and likely fetch a strong purchase price. The real estate group had listed it for sale before the lawsuit.

“It’s a big piece of property. There is not much buildable land left on Great Pond. If it was free and clear, it’d absolutely sell,” McCarron said. “We’ve had many inquiries about it, but we’ve never gotten the thumbs up from the Boy Scouts that it was OK to put it back on the market. At the end of the day, the value will be determined by what can be done with it. It’s got a lot of questions.”

An unidentified potential buyer, who previously had the property under contract to purchase, had indicated they would allow Scouts to have some use of the property. They backed out after not being able to get financing following the legal proceedings involving Bomazeen.

The property is tax exempt, because it is owned by a nonprofit organization. But the town of Belgrade assesses the property’s value at just over $2.1 million.

“But it’s a beautiful property,” McCarron said. “There is a lot of curiosity about what its future is.”

Bruce Rueger, of Waterville, and Scott Adams, of China, the leaders of Bomazeen Old Timers, an association of caretakers, Scout leaders, organizers and volunteers at the camp who want the property to remain as a camp for Scouts, and who intervened in the lawsuit seeking to prevent its sale, could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the camp continues to be used, although it is not listed among the Pine Tree Council’s summer camp programs at its other Maine camps. Savignano said scouting groups continue to camp at Bomazeen, mainly on weekends.