Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank Wants $22 Million for His Maryland Horse Farm -- WSJ

Dow Jones
27 Feb

By Sarah Paynter

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Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank is asking $22 million for his equestrian property outside Baltimore.

Once owned by the Vanderbilt family, the roughly 400-acre farm is located in rural Reisterstown, about 20 miles northwest of Baltimore, where the athletic-apparel company is based. Known as Sagamore Farm, it has a six-bedroom, roughly 16,000-square-foot main house as well as horse training and breeding facilities, according to listing agent Denie Dulin of Compass. Plank bought the property around 2007. He declined to say how much he paid for the property, but said he spent more than $22 million on the land and renovations.

Plank, who lives about 10 miles away in the Timonium area, used the farm as a guesthouse, a horse-training facility and a retreat center for employees, he said. He had hoped to use the property to raise horses to compete in Triple Crown races, he said, helping to revitalize Baltimore's reputation for horse-racing along the way. But he closed the farm's horse racing operations in 2021 because of the time commitment required. "That's a business you don't want to be in unless you're in it all the time," he said.

Plank, who has been CEO of Under Armour off and on since he founded the company in 1996, started quietly shopping Sagamore Farm off-market last year.

Sagamore Farm was created around 1925 by Isaac Emerson, the inventor of Bromo-Seltzer, whose daughter married into the Vanderbilt family, according to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Her son, Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr., bred and raced award-winning horses at the farm, according to the organization.

Vanderbilt sold the farm in the 1980s, when it fell into disrepair. After buying the property, Plank added a conference room to the circa-1990s main house, said Dulin, and commissioned a mural of Native Dancer, the Vanderbilts' famous racehorse. He also reoriented the house with a front porch overlooking the rye fields.

"When you watch the rye get harvested, it's one of the coolest days of the year," said Plank.

Plank repaired the estate's oak fences, added an outdoor training track, renovated two barns and added a third barn, with a combined capacity of over 200 horses, said Dulin. There are several paddocks, large fields, an indoor track and a circa-1909 spring house. The property also has a staff house and a bunk house for jockeys. At one point, Plank had around 100 horses on the property, and he still has about 15 horses there, he said.

Plank also added a clocker's tower for timing and observing the horses, he said. Especially at sunrise and sunset, he said, he enjoyed "sitting in that clocker's tower and hearing that 'thun thun, thun thun, thun thun, thun thun, thun thun,' when the horses are training."

He also used the farm to grow grains for the rye whiskey company Sagamore Spirit, of which he is a minority stake owner.

Plank's fond memories of the property have left him with complicated feelings about selling, he said, but the property is now underused because he's focused on running Under Armour. Plank returned to Under Armour as chief executive in 2024 after a 4-year hiatus from the role. The company went public in 2005.

Plank's two children with his wife, Desiree Jacqueline Guerzon, are now grown, which is another reason he is letting the property go, he said.

Plank has sold two other high-profile homes in the past decade, a Georgetown mansion for $17.25 million in 2020 and his Park City, Utah condo for $18 million in 2023.

The median residential sale price in Reisterstown and the nearby Glyndon neighborhood was $367,500 in January, about the same price as the same time last year, according to a report by Long & Foster. The number of sales fell 16% during the same period, according to the report.

Write to Sarah Paynter at Sarah.paynter@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 26, 2025 14:15 ET (19:15 GMT)

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