A top Aberdeen golf course will close by year’s end and be redeveloped into housing, as its owners seek to capture some of the 7,000 new households predicted to follow military growth at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Beechtree Golf Course, off Stepney Road and Route 7, is expected to be converted into 740 town houses and single-family houses, said Bob Hamilton, chief operating officer of Timonium-based James F. Knott Realty Group.

Beechtree has been named to several “top courses” lists by golf magazines since opening 10 years ago.

“The benefits of proceeding with the residential development far outweigh continuing operations of the golf business,” said Vice President of Development James F. Knott Jr. in the announcement of the course’s closure.

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Building more housing may be counterproductive, because the declining economy has left “a glut of housing” available in the area, especially for the early transfer employees coming from Fort Monmouth, N.J., during the next two years as part of the Base Realignment and Closure process, Harford County Executive David Craig said.

“From a regional perspective ... we can absolutely accommodate the BRAC growth with what already exists,” said Karen Holt, regional BRAC manager for the Chesapeake Science and Security Corridor.

Hamilton said his company anticipated the BRAC growth would defy the declining housing market by the time the first units are ready for occupancy in the first quarter of 2010.

“I would expect that by early 2010, we’ll be in a very different place than we are today,” he said.

He could not comment on Craig’s and Holt’s assertions, having not seen the 2007 Sage Policy Group demographic report they cited. The report had been commissioned to estimate the effect of BRAC on Harford and the other counties surrounding Aberdeen Proving Ground.

County Economic Development Director James Richardson said the Sage Policy Group’s estimates assumed a certain amount of development would take place — not that demand could be met with existing houses.

“We don’t have the houses sitting here, vacant, to accommodate the growth,” Richardson said.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com