For golfers, warmer weather heralds a return to the links, but the future of two of the city’s public courses is stuck in the rough, and a former nine-hole course is not likely to reopen.
After losing their contract to run the public-owned Marine Park Golf Course in Brooklyn, the operators are swinging back at the city, saying they were wrongly accused of having mafia ties.
The other conflict, a Bronx construction debacle nine years in the making, has ended in a stalemate. Plans for the course at Ferry Point Park in the shadow of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge — which was to be built over a former garbage dump once known for spontaneous methane fires — have been set aside. The city and a private developer ended their partnership late last year without making much progress.
A former nine-hole course built by the Coast Guard on Governor’s Island will probably never host foursomes again. Though the land will remain open space as the city assumes control of the 172-acre island off the southern tip of Manhattan, “We don’t envision a future for golf on the island,” said Elizabeth Berberich, a spokeswoman for the Empire State Development Corporation, which will decide most of the historic locale’s future.
The city’s concrete canyons make New York an unlikely golf mecca, but there are about 15 sets of links in the five boroughs, all but two of which are public. “When people find out there are over a dozen, they’re really amazed,” said Bill Castner, a local golf pro who created the Web site golfinnyc.com.
While room for new housing, stores and offices is always in demand in a space-starved city, these courses won’t likely be disappearing anytime soon. The city’s existing public courses will remain open space for the foreseeable future. it would take an act of the state legislature to turn a city park into any other use, said Parks Department spokesman Warner Johnston. The two private courses that still operate within city limits present unique potential development situations.
Many outer-borough communities were formed on former golf courses when population growth outstripped the pursuit of leisure. Kew Gardens, Queens, occupies the grounds of the former Richmond Hill Golf Course. Other neighborhoods with substantial housing stock that stand on land that once consisted of fairways and greens include Laurelton, Bayside, Fresh Meadows and Jackson Heights. Local schools, including Queensborough Community College and St. John’s University, were also built on golf courses.
A gentleman’s game
For the Marine Park Golf Course, the dispute about mafia ties stands in stark contrast to the image of golf as a gentleman’s game.
The city terminated East Coast Golf’s 20-year contract to operate the course in January after City Comptroller Bill Thompson alleged that the father of course operator Dominick Logozzo loaned money to a mobster, according to published reports.
An attorney for Logozzo said the contract was unfairly terminated because the operators are Italian-American.
The reports said East Coast Golf made more than $1 million in renovations and had agreed to put $3 million more into the course. The operators filed a lawsuit last month in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
The only other public golf course in Brooklyn is a course in Dyker Beach Park. The course covers 110 acres, compared to Marine Park’s 105.
The Bronx, of course
When the Ferry Point Park Course gets built, the Bronx — surprisingly — will have the most public golf courses of any borough.
But that may not happen soon.
The tussle over the Ferry Point course, in which both parties terminated their operating arrangement in December, is a study in neutral, for-public-consumption comments that reveal little of the underlying conflict over the $80 million project.
“It was a mutual decision,” said Johnston. “We realized they wouldn’t be able to complete the course in the time that was originally thought.”
Attempts to reach the developer, Ferry Point Partners, were not successful.
Determined not to be stuck with a costly and potentially hazardous white elephant, the city will request new proposals that “will be similar to what currently exists, though some changes might be in the works,” said Johnston.
Reports put the price tag for a viable golf course north of $80 million. In addition to planning an upgrade for the entire park, the city seeks “a new operator to complete construction of an 18-hole, tournament-quality golf course and related facilities,” according to a Parks Department statement.
The plan had its genesis in 1998, when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani touted a plan that called for the city to lease half of Ferry Point Park to a private developer for 35 years in return for the construction of a golf course. The city would receive a minimum of $1.25 million a year from course revenue and ultimately take over the property, which had been an illegal dump for decades.
According to the city’s original plan, Jack Nicklaus would design the course and Westchester-based Ferry Point Partners would spend $22.5 million sculpting 222 acres of greens and fairways into what would be the city’s largest course by far. The city could woo a stop on the Professional Golf Association tour.
Work on the golf course began in August 2000. The first roadblock emerged when two environmental groups and a model airplane club sued to stop the project. They lost, but the dust-up led the PGA Tour to abandon interest and negative press dogged the project. Reports focused on concerns of residents living in a nearby housing project, who protested the creation of a tony enclave within their midst. The area still resembles a moonscape despite years of work.
Private to public, eventually
There are a few private courses in the city, and one that’s slated to go public, but not any time soon.
The Richmond County Country Club in Staten Island, now private, will go public, but not in time for you to knock off even a quick nine holes. It won’t go public until 2088.
In 1989, according to the club’s Web site, the state bought the course’s land to preserve it as a key link in the Staten Island Greenbelt. To maintain its 99-year lease, the club pays the state $1 a year. The buyout was a result of the club having trouble meeting its tax burden in the late 1980s, said John Eramo, the club’s general manager.
At the end of the lease, said Castner, the club is slated to go public and anyone who can pony up the greens fee will be able to tee off where the city’s elite once enjoyed unobstructed views of New York Harbor.
The only truly private golf course in the five boroughs is at North Shore Towers, which wraps around three 33-story buildings that dominate the skyline in the far eastern reaches of Queens and occupies the former site of the Glen Oaks Golf Club. The Towers Country Club, open only to residents, is promoted as a prime amenity at the self-contained community.
“The reason why many people have bought here is because of the golf course,” said Annette Kroll, who specializes in resales at North Shore Towers. “Right now, the co-op is financially sound, so there’s no reason to sell the land.”
The property also carries a covenant designed to preserve the golf course. “When the high-rises were proposed, there was a big hullabaloo about traffic in Lake Success [in Nassau County], so the club kept it solely for residents and instituted building restrictions,” said the co-op’s attorney, Errol Brett.
The course is known for being well-maintained, said Castner. “You walk out of the elevator and it’s like you’re in Arizona.”