Inside the most expensive municipal golf course in the U.S.

A look at the Bronx’s controversial Trump Golf Links

Donald Trump and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. at Ferry Point and the Throggs Neck Houses
Donald Trump and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. at Ferry Point and the Throggs Neck Houses

Donald Trump’s Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, the new nine-figure taxpayer-funded municipal course, has been controversial from the get-go. While many see the sweeping greens as a vast improvement over what had been a dump, others continue to feel that the luxury course is slap in the face of New York City’s poorest borough.

TrumpGolfLinksatFerryPoint

Vanity Fair recently made the trip to the shores of the East River in the Bronx to give the course a try. Here’s their take:

Just outside the course, they spied “soot-stained smoke stacks, housing projects covered in scaffolding, a sea of grey warehouses. On a warm, hazy Friday in early May, the scent of warm donuts mingled with car exhaust.”

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Nevertheless, “the greens are immaculate; the bunkers deep. The course is dappled with grassy dunes covered in golden fescue. On the back nine, the view of the Manhattan skyline, off in the distance, is so massive and beautiful and—to borrow a Trumpian adjective—classy, that the rate of play slows because so many people pause to pose for photos.”

But here are the facts: the public course will be closed for 20 percent of the season for private events; yet the city pays water bill — as much as $300,000 annually. And a weekend game costs NYC residents $169 — $54 for kids.

“It is the most expensive municipal course in the United States, located in the poorest congressional district in the United States,” Vanity Fair writes. [VF]Christopher Cameron