The line of golf carts rolled past the recently-seeded greens on the soon-to-open county golf course on the extreme western side of Lincoln Park. It was September, and the county has rushed to get the area seeded during a narrow window of opportunity so that it will be ready to open early next summer.
“If we hadn’t seeded when we did, we might have had to wait for months or even another year to open,” said the clearly excited Norman M. Guerra, executive director of the Hudson County Improvement Authority.
This will be the first publicly accessible golf course in Hudson County. It will be owned by the county but operated by Kemper Sports of Chicago, a well-established golf course management company.
And though it is only a nine-hole course, it seems to be part of a trend among golfers who no longer have time for the full 18 holes.
“We tried to buy property nearby for the back nine,” said County Executive Tom DeGise. “But at the time, the city wanted that property for tax ratables.”
DeGise is by all accounts the moving force behind establishing an affordable, public county golf course. While Hudson County has two spectacular golf courses, the Bayonne Golf Club and the Liberty Golf Club, both are private clubs well beyond the financial reach of the average golfer in Hudson County.
“People are constantly saying they don’t see progress on the golf course. That’s because you can’t see the golf course from outside” – Norman Guerra
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Former driving range
Until it closed in late fall 2009, part of the new course site was once the Lincoln Park Driving Range. The range, which was privately owned until 2005 when the county took it over, became a key piece in the expanded nine-hole course.
At the time, DeGise said the county lacked a course affordable to the general public. DeGise, an avid golfer, said many residents of Hudson County have to travel out of the county to play.
The golf course project coincided with several environmental projects. The state and federal governments want to restore wetlands along the Hackensack River (which runs down the western edge of Jersey City and Lincoln Park), and hoped to do environmental remediation on a former unofficial dump. The golf course project became tied in with the cleanup, and often worked side by side, sometimes even sharing some of the same resources. Some of the muck dug up from the wetlands became useful as fill for the golf course – though the course needed a lot more clean fill once the debris was removed.
“We had to clean all that out,” Guerra said.
The junk included everything from auto parts of old refrigerators. And asked if workers ever found the remains of former labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, rumored to be buried in a landfill near the Pulaski Skyway, Guerra laughed. “No, but we did find some bones. These turned out to be an animal’s, not human.”
As grand a view as other courses
The trip through the golf course showed significant progress, with most of the greens glowing in the bright sun. The views are stunning, especially of the Pulaski Skyway just north of the site. But there are views of Manhattan as well, giving the new course has stunning views and at a fraction of the cost of the county’s premier courses.
While the price hasn’t been set, DeGise and other county officials have estimated a session might cost between $20 to $40, well within the means of most players. Although not seen as particularly difficult, some of the holes may pose challenges, such as one that faces west forcing golfers to hit balls over a small pond onto a fairway on the far side.
Delayed by a number of factors, not least Super Storm Sandy in late 2012, the county’s $13 million course got a number of lucky breaks that will likely allow it to open by early summer, 2015. Located in Lincoln Park West, the course is being constructed on approximately 60 acres of underutilized land. Started in 2010, the project was originally slated to take 18 to 24 months to complete.
The Lincoln Park Wetlands Restoration Project along the proposed new course’s south border – which restored approximately 31 acres of wetlands, created 4,500 linear feet of tidal creeks, and initiated a new walking trail near the Hackensack River – was significantly impacted by tidal flooding associated with Sandy. So was the proposed capping of a former landfill.
The project was to have been completed in 2012. After Sandy flooded the golf course location and the nearby environmental mitigation site, the HCIA decided to increase the height of the golf course to avoid flooding from future storms. So far, more than1 million cubic yards of soil have been delivered to the golf course site.
Since then, the project has made huge strides, even though the site appears on the surface to be unchanged. When it’s finished, the new course will feature three par 5 holes, three par 4 holes, and three par 3 holes, with approximately 3,200 total yardage.
Guerra said the golf course is about 70 percent complete, and fortunately, the county was able to seed in August that will allow people to tee off perhaps as early as June.
“People are constantly saying they don’t see progress on the golf course,” Guerra said. “That’s because you can’t see the golf course from outside. But there are plenty of things going on.”
The next step?
The course was designed by Case Golf of Florida, which brought on PS&S of Warren, New Jersey as project engineers.
Earth services, which includes bringing in landfill, shaping the course and deep draining, was done by Persistent Construction of Fairview. The work on ponds and the irrigation system was done by D’Annunzio & Sons Inc. of Clark, and Turko Golf, from Suffern, N.Y. did the seeding.
Along the riverside of the golf course is a public walkway that connects the main part of Lincoln Park, and will eventually when the permanent club house is constructed, continue along the shore of the Hackensack River going north.
A temporary club house is being built in an area that formerly held Hudson County Sheriff’s operations.
“The next step will be to construct a permanent club house,” Guerra said.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.