The late Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham had a story he liked to tell about a local teacher who would tell her students that the Statue of Liberty once faced Jersey City, but turned her back on the town because of how badly the children behaved. Cunningham added that when the city redeemed itself, there would be a deafening screech of grinding metal as Lady Liberty whirled back around to face the state’s second largest city once more.
The creators of Liberty National Golf Club haven’t quite coaxed the statue to turn around yet, but you couldn’t blame her if she were at least a bit curious to check out the new club’s meticulously sculpted fairways and superfine greens.
There is a stark contrast between the reedy contaminated land that once characterized the spot and the emerald gem now taking shape along the shore – scheduled for a deliberately symbolic opening date of July 4.
And if Jersey City’s boosters were looking for a crowning symbol of redemption, capping two decades of economic recovery, the opening of Liberty National would be an obvious choice – at least among golf enthusiasts.
Perhaps fittingly, the 165-acre course, just south of Liberty State Park, lies on land once occupied by rail yards (one of the industries of Jersey City that declined), a military installation, and other industrial sites. Traces of industrial toxins have been covered with up to 50 feet of topsoil, reinforced in some places with a half-inch layer of plastic.
Golf enthusiasts designed it
Built at a cost of $129 million, Liberty National is not only one of the world’s most expensive golf courses to construct, but also to play on, with an initiation fee now set at $400,000.
The course was designed by renowned golf architect Bob Cupp and PGA player Tom Kite, and was conceived by Applied Housing Co. founder Joseph Barry. Development of the project for the past nine years has been headed by Reebok founder Paul Fireman, chair of Willowbend Development LLC, a Massachusetts-based company.
Fireman, a 61-year-old golf enthusiast with a footwear fortune that far outdistances even the one amassed by Nike spokespro Tiger Woods, envisions Liberty National as a monument to the game. His hope is that Liberty National will someday host golf’s U.S. Open or another major tournament.
Fireman’s 33-year-old son, Dan, a former collegiate golfer who shoots in the high 70s, has overseen course construction as president and CEO of Willowbend.
Liberty National’s proximity to Wall Street and its spectacular views of the statue, the Manhattan skyline, and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge distinguish it from countless courses in the suburbs. But the club is also part of a nationwide trend in which public and private courses are being constructed on contaminated sites, in part because remediation standards for recreational uses are more relaxed than for businesses or homes. The trend also includes Bayonne Golf Club – a private waterfront links course also set to open this summer, which was built atop a landfill – and two public courses currently under construction in the Meadowlands.
Three courses in one
Liberty National combines a waterfront setting with a mix of tree-lined parkland type holes and barren Scottish-style links characterized by high rough and sharply undulating fairways. Think Augusta National, Winged Foot and Troon in the same round.
More than 1,000 pine, oak and maple trees have been planted to define the holes, diversify the scenery, and muffle the sound of traffic along the New Jersey Turnpike extension that runs just west of the course, said Adrian Davies, Liberty National’s director of golf development.
Davies, a former European tour player, is among a select few to have already hit golf balls around the unfinished course. The wind, which comes from a southwesterly heading, and not directly off the water to the east, is likely to be the course’s signature challenge, Davies said.
The links holes dominate the early part of the front nine, then return on the back, including the challenging 18th, which is a narrow 400-yard par 4 with a slight dogleg right. It runs along a manmade bluff 50 feet above a wetlands area and the harbor beyond. Too much fade off the tee could land the ball in the drink, or at best in a huge trap that runs nearly half the length of the fairway. Too much draw, and you’re in the high grass – very high grass. The hole, like the entire course, will be especially tough if the wind is a factor, which it almost certainly will be.
“I think it’s going to make it interesting, because the links don’t have the trees,” the younger Fireman said, noting that those holes will be subject to the harbor region’s notoriously swirling breezes. But, he added, “once you kind of transition into the parkland aspects, I think it’ll be kind of a relief.”
‘Not just about golf’
But it’s not only playing in the shadow of sculptor Auguste Bartholdi’s gift to the American people that makes the club a unique experience.
“The philosophy is, it’s not just about golf,” Fireman said. “It’s the amenities that go with a really special golf course.”
For example, the 50,000-square-foot clubhouse, still just a blueprint, will include a five-star restaurant headed by chef Tom Colicchio of Manhattan’s Gramercy Tavern. A helipad and private launch service to Manhattan will mean members can play a quick 18 in the morning and be back in the boardroom by lunchtime.
Davies, the golf director, said members include residents of nearby Port Liberte, the luxury condominium enclave immediately south of the course. But Liberty National is still recruiting – from among Wall Street types and other New York business people, as well as residents of New Jersey and farther reaches – and membership is not only private, Fireman said; it’s confidential.
On the course’s northern edge, just across an inlet from Liberty State Park, Willowbend and a local partner, the Applied Companies of Hoboken, are constructing three residential towers of 35, 43 and 50 stories each, to be known as the Residences at Liberty National.
Prices for the project’s 932 units will range from just over $400,000 to $1.4 million. Condominium ownership does not equate to membership in the golf club, just as club members will not have to own a condo.
Benefits for surrounding area
Like many exclusive clubs, Liberty National is beyond the means of most residents of its host surrounding area. But club officials point out that even non-members in Jersey City stand to benefit in several ways.
For example, property taxes from the 165-acre course are certain to far exceed those from the area’s former uses. Unlike many of the recent developments farther north along the city’s waterfront, including a luxury condominium project announced last September by Donald Trump, the golf course has not been granted a tax abatement by the city, said Maria Pignataro, a spokeswoman for Mayor Jerramiah Healy.
Aurelian Anghelusiu, Liberty National’s vice president and managing director, said the course will be looking to hire clubhouse and other staff from the surrounding community. Well aware that the area has never had a golf course and therefore lacks experienced caddies, Anghelusiu said Liberty National will institute a thorough training program.
Beyond learning mere bag-toting skills, he said, each caddie will be trained to serve as a “four-hour butler, if you will.”
As Fireman said of the club’s well-heeled members, “I want them to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.” After all, he added, “It’s a lot of money.”