From Trash to Trophies: A New Golf Course Grows in the Bronx

As part of last fall’s PGA Tour FedEx Playoffs, the Barclays Classic was contested at Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey amid great fanfare. Television coverage kept panning to the spectacular views of the New York skyline and also covered the conversion of the former industrial waste site to tournament golf venue.

In 2011 New York City will have its own tournament-worthy links-style golf course with its own spectacular views of Manhattan, the East River, and the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges. New York City is home to the first municipal golf course built in the United States, Van Cortlandt Park, which opened in 1895 and now, 116 years later, is scheduled to unveil a world-class municipal golf facility.

Construction has begun on Ferry Point Golf Course in the Bronx on a 222-acre waterfront site that was used by the city as a landfill from 1952 to 1970. It will be financed by the city and operated as a high-end public course with an eye towards hosting a PGA Tour event in the future.

There was a prior attempt at building the course with private developer money. That project during Rudy Giuliani’s time as mayor in the late 1990′s had Jack Nicklaus as the course designer, but it failed amid claims of mismanagement. Ultimately, the city paid the developers a termination fee and canceled the agreement.(cybergolf.com)

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