The owner of Sterling, Va.-based JK Moving Services is set to buy White’s Ferry, potentially restarting service across the Potomac River between Montgomery County and Loudoun County after a dispute over a Virginia landing site on the river shuttered the ferry in late December.

The Washington Business Journal first reported the news that Chuck Kuhn and his wife finalized the terms of the deal, which would include the ferry and the landing on the Maryland side, as well as a convenience store that serves motorists driving to and from the ferry and and cyclists coming along the C&O Canal towpath.

“This fits with my family’s interest in conserving land and history as well as supporting business and the local communities,” Kuhn said in a statement. “White’s Ferry has provided an important and scenic transportation alternative to the swelling demands on our local roads. We look forward to working with nearby landowners and local jurisdictions to make this viable for the region.”

The ferry — the last of its kind along the Potomac River, and the only crossing between the American Legion Bridge and Point of Rocks 40 miles to the north — had been in service since the late 1700s, most recently carrying between 800 and 1,000 cars a day between Poolesville, Md., and Leesburg, Va. It closed to traffic in late December after a long-running dispute over use of the privately held landing on the Virginia side, raising alarm bells from commuters and prompting a series of stop-and-start negotiations between the ferry’s owners and the Virginia landing’s owners to restart service.

With Kuhn now set to to take ownership of the ferry, he still will have to negotiate a deal with Rockland Farm, which owns land on the Virginia of the river that includes the landing site. In an interview with WAMU/DCist late last year, Libby Devlin, one of the farm’s owners, said she wanted to find a way to restore service. (She said she had even tried to buy the ferry herself.)

This isn’t the first time Kuhn has stepped in to purchase land or services as a means to preserve them. In recent years, he has put thousands of acres of land in Loudoun, Frederick and Faiquier counties under conservation easements, meaning they cannot be developed.