A century-old Girl Scout camp on Lake Winnipesaukee with direct ties to Lexington faces conversion into luxury housing, and a local resident who earned scouting's highest honor is calling on two state attorneys general to preserve it.

Susan Cournoyer, a Lexington-area Gold Award recipient who attended Camp Menotomy as a teenager and later brought her daughter to family camp there, published a letter in the Lexington Observer on Wednesday, Aug. 12, urging the Massachusetts and New Hampshire attorneys general to ensure the 95-acre property remains available for youth rather than be sold for $18 million to a developer planning luxury homes.

The Lexington connection runs deep. When the Camp Menotomy Trust was established in 1962, one of its five founding members, identified in records only as "Walter," came from Lexington. Other trustees hailed from Arlington, Belmont, Acton and Laconia, New Hampshire.

From Girl Scout camp to developer's lot

The camp sits on Meredith Neck Road in Meredith, New Hampshire, with nearly a mile of undeveloped shorefront on Lake Winnipesaukee. It opened as a Girl Scout camp on July 2, 1939, with 46 campers after Arlington Girl Scouts Inc. purchased the property from a former boys' camp.

Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts operated Camp Menotomy for nearly 80 years under a $1-per-year lease before terminating that agreement on May 9, 2023, calling the camp "economically unviable."

The Trust listed the property for $20 million in February 2024. Within one day, it accepted an $18 million offer from Jeremy Martin, president of Lakes Region Design Group, in partnership with Menotomy Development LLC. Martin's plan calls for seven luxury home lots on the 95-acre site, which is currently assessed at approximately $15.3 million, according to InDepthNH.

The speed of the sale drew scrutiny. The Trust filed a formal court petition in Massachusetts on Oct. 14, 2025, seeking approval to sell. That case was still pending as of April 2026. The Massachusetts Public Charities Division has been investigating since 2025, and New Hampshire's attorney general was notified in 2024.

The 1962 deed restricts the sale: the property may only be sold if no organization can be found to use it as a camping site, according to YourArlington. At least one camp operator, Eric Carlson of Camp Quinebarge in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, submitted a $1.5 million purchase offer and later proposed a 30-year lease worth more than $15 million in total rent and scholarships. Opponents say the Trust ignored those offers for two years.

Bradford Cook, a lawyer representing the Trust, told YourArlington in October 2025 that he was not authorized to comment on the case. In an earlier email to the Laconia Daily Sun, Cook said his clients believed the sale was the most reasonable strategy "given the values of the property which was not contemplated by anyone at the time" the deed was written.

A Lexington legacy

Cournoyer wrote that the camp always served girls well beyond Arlington, pointing to a 1944 brochure that listed rates for non-Arlington residents and non-Scouts alongside Arlington girls.

"Just because the Covid pandemic created a temporary downturn in camping shouldn't mean that this century-old camp is lost forever," Cournoyer wrote in her Aug. 12 letter.

The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office told YourArlington in October 2025 that the matter was under review but declined to share further details. No hearing date has been publicly announced for the pending court case.