Goodland sells for $1.35 million, less than half its asking price
The new owners plan to restore the historic Mount Olive property as a family destination, without the nudity
The property that once housed Goodland Country Club, one of the oldest nudist resorts in the United States, has sold for $1,350,000, according to a report by News 12 New Jersey. The sale closed well under the $2.9 million asking price the thirty-five-acre estate carried when it went on the market in March.
Goodland closed permanently in the spring of 2024, when longtime owner Jack Korzilius announced his retirement after fifty years running the club. Planet Nude covered the closure in full at the time, tracing the property’s roots to the early 1930s, when nudist organizer Ruth Winkler helped establish an early club in the area after New York banned nudism outright. That group relocated to the Hackettstown estate in 1936 and became Camp Goodland, joining the American Sunbathing Association by the end of the decade. Korzilius bought the property in 1974 and renamed it Goodland Country Club the following year.
According to the listing agent quoted by News 12, real estate agent Ashley Dellamo of KW Integrity, the new owners intend to bring the property back to its former grandeur, but as a family-friendly destination, and, in her words, “without the nudity.” Dellamo said the transformation will take several years because of the approvals and planning required.
Those approvals will be shaped by the same constraint that limited the property’s marketability in the first place. Because the estate falls under New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act regulations, further subdivision or new construction is restricted, meaning whoever bought it is working with the existing footprint: a Victorian-era main house, roughly two dozen one-room cabins, a recreation hall, an in-ground pool, and scattered campsite and RV infrastructure built up over nine decades of operation as a nudist club.
The identity of the buyer has not been made public. As of this writing, no deed transfer has surfaced in Morris County land records, and no real estate listing has yet been updated to reflect the sale; several still show the property as active at its original $2.9 million ask. Planet Nude will update this story if that information becomes available.
What is confirmed is the outcome: a property that spent nearly ninety years as one of the country’s most enduring nudist institutions is headed toward a second life that pointedly excludes the thing that made it historic. Goodland’s story now joins a familiar pattern among American nudist clubs in recent years, one Planet Nude has tracked across DeAnza Springs, Desert Sun Resort, and Olive Dell Ranch: not just closure, but a change of hands that erases the naturist chapter entirely rather than preserving or continuing it. 🪐
Did the members consider just buying Goodland and making it a Co-op? I don't know the number of members, but if it's say 50, then $1.35M would just be $27k each, the price of a used car. I wonder if this was considered here or at other nudist venues that have sold out to textiles.
You can make a resort "family-friendly" and still keep it a nudist resort. You just add family friendly amenities, and change your marketing. People are just too closed minded these days!
Substack needs to add additional reaction emojis, as a heart really isn't appropriate for posts like this. 😞