Oregon Dairy’s longtime owners have sold the last remnant of the controversial Oregon Village mixed-use project in Manheim Township to another local developer that has been mum about its plans for the property.
According to a deed recorded in the Lancaster County courthouse earlier this month, members of the Hurst family sold the 25-acre property at 1289 Creek Rd. for $2.6 million to the principals of Manheim Township-based Vanguard Development Group, a developer of office, retail and apartment projects.
With the acquisition, Vanguard CEO Jerry Horst and his sons Chad and Mark – who is the company’s president – now own 50 acres of commercial-zoned property along Oregon Pike and Creek Road next to the Oregon Dairy restaurant and market, two-thirds of what the Hursts once hoped to turn into Oregon Village.
The Horsts paid $7.1 million last May for the Oregon Dairy market and restaurant buildings and another 25 acres. They agreed to a 15-year leaseback deal with the Hursts for the market and restaurant buildings, with the option to extend it in the future.
Through a spokesperson, Vic Hurst declined to comment for this article. Last May, he told LNP | LancasterOnline that he did not know if the Horsts had any development plans.
The property is currently farmed and includes a house and a barn at the corner of Oregon Pike and Creek Road. A portion of the land was used as Oregon Dairy’s corn maze and sunflower field – which the Hursts plan to relocate to another part of their property.
But it is located in a commercial zoning district allowing uses like supermarkets, wholesale clubs, hotels, auto dealerships and gas stations. About 90% of the land is also covered by the township’s village overlay zoning district, which allows dense mixed-use development, like what was proposed in the now-abandoned Oregon Village plan.
The transaction also included two homes at 1351 and 1357 E. Oregon Rd., sitting on residential-zoned properties totalling less than an acre.
Vanguard develops residential and commercial projects, including the RKL building next to Route 30 on Fruitville Pike, a Fruitville Pike shopping center with a Starbucks and Five Guys and the Apartments at Lititz Springs in Lititz.
Oregon Village was a proposed mixed-use development on both sides of Oregon Pike that included up to 554 housing units, a 120-room hotel, restaurants and stores. The project initially received conditional-use approval from the Manheim Township Board of Commissioners, but a court overturned the approval, and on a second try, the commissioners rejected it.
Members of the Hurst family still own well over 100 acres of agricultural-zoned land near the market and dairy, none of which was included in the development proposal.
In January 2024, it sold the other 25 acres it proposed for Oregon Village, located across Oregon Pike and southeast of the dairy. The buyer, Kirpa Estates LP, was recently denied in a bid to change the zoning ordinance to allow standalone apartment buildings on the site along with a house of worship and a hotel. Zoned commercial, it was the site of the former Shawnee Resort and has been vacant since 1989.
In May, the Hurst family announced the sale of the market and restaurant buildings, which came after the second-generation Hursts sold the company that operates the market, Oregon Dairy Incorporated, to third- and fourth-generation family members.
“This generation is passing the torch to the next generation, who has proved itself to be very capable,” Vic Hurst told LNP | LancasterOnline at the time.
Jerry, Mark and Chad Horst could not be reached for comment for this story.
TOM LISI | Staff Writer 
