August 20, 2026
Drive west on MD-140 toward Westminster, turn onto Emory Road, and you will eventually find Lawndale Road, then River Downs Drive, then the entrance to a golf course that most people in Finksburg had quietly stopped expecting anything from. For a long stretch of the past few years, the fairways at River Downs sat overgrown, the grass gone brown in patches, the clubhouse looking like a building waiting for someone to decide what happens next. If you golfed there in the 2010s, or if you just drove past it often enough to notice the neglect, you probably wrote it off.
This year, something changed. But if you are the kind of person who checks in on local news once and assumes the story is settled, you are working from an outdated picture. River Downs is not reopening as a single event. It is reopening in pieces, on purpose, and knowing which pieces are ready right now, in mid-August 2026, is the difference between a good afternoon and a wasted drive.
The sale of River Downs closed in November 2025, when longtime Carroll County residents Rafiq Islam and Clarinda de Guzman Islam took over a course that had been a fixture of local golf since it opened in 1995. Their renovation plan was never framed as a single reopening date. It was framed as two phases with two different timelines.
The first phase landed on March 1, 2026: a soft opening of the driving range, fitted with portable bay covers, along with a golf simulator and the restaurant. That part of the property has been operating for months now. The second phase, the return of the full 18-hole course, was targeted for June 27, 2026, and even that date came with a built-in asterisk. The new turf needs time to take hold, so play in 2026 is intentionally limited while the grass establishes. The owners have said they expect the operation to be running at full capacity by 2027, not this year.
That distinction matters if you are planning a visit. The parts of River Downs built for immediate use, the range, the simulator, the kitchen, are the parts worth showing up for this month. The full round of golf is still finding its legs.
If you want to hit a bucket of balls, the driving range has been open since early March, with the portable bay covers giving it some protection from weather. If you would rather work on your swing without setting foot outside, the golf simulator is running too. The restaurant that came online with the same soft opening gives the property a reason to stop by even if you have no interest in golf at all.
The addition that seems to have generated the most local interest, though, is pickleball. After hearing from people in the community who wanted it, the Islams added two pickleball courts to the property, a detail that has nothing to do with golf tradition and everything to do with listening to what neighbors actually asked for.
"Making sure that that sense of community starts coming back here" is how Clarinda de Guzman Islam described the goal of the renovation, and the pickleball courts are a fairly literal example of that idea in practice. This is not a course being restored to exactly what it was in 1995. It is being rebuilt around what people in Finksburg are asking for now.
Rafiq and Clarinda de Guzman Islam are not golf industry veterans. Their background is in Maryland's biotechnology and innovation sectors, and that background shows up in some of the choices they have made for the property. Alongside the simulator and the pickleball courts, they are building out a program called Science on the Green, which uses the course as a setting for STEM education aimed at kids.
The plan includes hosting local schools, Carroll Community College, McDaniel College, and the University of Maryland for practices and field trips, turning a golf property into something closer to a shared community and education space. Some of the programming has come from inside the family itself. Samien Islam, the owners' 19-year-old nephew and a sophomore at the University of Waterloo studying biochemistry, has been helping develop the Science on the Green curriculum, describing golf as a way to teach science that does not feel like sitting in a classroom.
None of this reads like a standard country club renovation. It reads like a family building the kind of place they wish had existed when their own kids were younger, which lines up with what Clarinda de Guzman Islam has said publicly about wanting River Downs to be somewhere families can slow down together.
Restoring a golf course that sat neglected for years is not a quick fix, and the owners have been candid about that. The facilities date to the 1990s and need modernization. The rural setting that makes River Downs feel like a countryside escape also limits its visibility to people who are not already looking for it. Weather has already factored into how much play the course can support this season.
One detail says more about how long River Downs was effectively dark than any renovation timeline could. Mark Sizemore, a 68-year-old golf coach who used to teach at the club, is now consulting with the new owners on how to adjust the course for golfers of different skill levels. Before this project, the last time he had played there was November 2023. That is nearly three years between rounds for someone who once worked on that course regularly, which gives you a sense of how far River Downs had drifted from daily use before this ownership change.
Here is a rough guide to where things stand as the 2026 season plays out and what to expect heading into next year.
| Timeframe | What's available |
|---|---|
| Right now (August 2026) | Driving range with portable bay covers, golf simulator, restaurant, two pickleball courts |
| Rest of the 2026 season | Full 18-hole course, with play limited while new turf establishes |
| 2027 | Full course operation, expanded Science on the Green programming with local schools and colleges |
If you are hoping for a wide-open round this fall the way the course played in its better years, the turf may not be ready for heavy traffic yet. If you are looking for a driving range session, a simulator round on a rainy evening, a plate of food, or a pickleball match, all of that is already up and running.
River Downs sits at 1900 River Downs Drive in Finksburg, and the drive is short from most of the surrounding towns. Coming from Westminster, Eldersburg, Hampstead, or Manchester, the route runs along MD-140 to Emory Road and then Lawndale Road. Golfers coming from southern Pennsylvania towns like Hanover or Shrewsbury can pick up I-83 South to MD-140 East and follow the same last few turns onto River Downs Drive.
What you will find there right now is a course in the middle of coming back to life, not a finished product and not the overgrown property the Baltimore Sun photographed back in January either. It is somewhere in between, on a schedule the owners have been upfront about, with the parts built for immediate use already open for business.
For longtime residents who remember what River Downs used to be, that middle ground might be worth a visit on its own. Stop in for the range or the simulator, grab something to eat, and see for yourself how much has changed since the last time you drove past.
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