The Lake Shawnee Club was originally established in 1946 by the Arthur D. Crane Company who purchased and sub-divided the tract of land known as the Lake Shawnee Reservation. Individual lots were sold and prior to the sale each property owner was required to become a member of the Lake Shawnee Club. Unfortunately at that time, in order to be accepted into membership, the person(s) purchasing a lot had to be of a specific race, creed & color. This practice continued through the 1960’s until Federal Civil Rights legislation made it illegal to continue this practice and it appears that either previous boards or the Arthur D. Crane Company allowed the community to slip into a voluntary membership scheme.

With membership slowly dwindling over the years and the financial security of the club in serious jeopardy, in early 2004, the Lake Shawnee Board of Governors began to explore the feasibility of instituting a “fair share assessment” for all residents within the Lake Shawnee reservation. The main reason of such an assessment was to equalize and to spread out the costs of managing and preserving the lake among all our residents.

While pushing forward to implement a “fair share assessment” and after research that was conducted by our attorney Eileen Born of Dolan & Dolan, it was brought to the Boards attention, that the master deed of the Lake Shawnee Reservation, known as the “Schneider Deed”, contained language that originally made Lake Shawnee a mandatory membership community.

Based on the advice of our attorney and later approved by the membership at the Annual Meeting on November 6, 2005, mandatory membership was re-instituted on April 1, 2006. Unfortunately, a number of residents of the lake failed to make payment of their dues that year and a collection action was initiated by the club in NJ Superior Court. At that time, the court felt the wording in “Schneider Deed” and other associated formation documents, was not strong enough to sustain mandatory membership. The Board of Governors again based on advice from our attorney felt strongly against this decision and filed an appeal with the NJ Appellate Court.

On March 14, 2008, the NJ Appellate Court, after a review of the original formation documents of the Lake Shawnee Club, rendered an opinion and upheld that Lake Shawnee is a mandatory membership community.