Longer ago than me, mobsters dumped strange waste and the carcasses of enemies into a landfill on Ferry Point in the Bronx. Then the time was right for a new municipal golf development in New York City. In the late '90s, plans were laid for a golf development over the 'Old Ferry' toxic muck. It wasn't meant to be right away. Environmental justice stalled the project and the first developer failed to balance his checkbook.
In 2007, after the project found newness, it was put to the highest bidder. Donald Trump -- a man, who in some eyes, has yet to complete a project available to good taste and fair dealing -- won the bid. Not even Tammany Hall could have devised such a wool-stealing scheme of these proportions. And yet, the public was aware, and the votes were cast in favor. "All Hail Lord Trump!" Why would Mayor Bloomberg not want his legacy golf development to be built in a design homage to his home club (the National) so that the public could enjoy one of the finest courses in the land? How silly Joe Public, Mr. Trump wants to build a course fit for major championships on a bed of public dollars.
To accompany Trump, the brownfield canvass was awarded to the most-majors-architect, a man with the artistic ability of a bear. Do we really need another high-fade-heavy-spin designed architectural abomination where the public can lose its fortune in golf balls? Will the public even be able to afford to lose its plastic sack of 50 cent water-retrieved-balls on this "championship course"?
The opportunity seemed great for a new era of municipal golf development. Instead, logic was buried in the depths of the methane-infested landfill, and far beneath the deep divots of, (what surely will be), some over-watered fairways. Early renderings of the course feature mounding that looks more like the work of an enthusiastic chest augmenting surgeon than a handsome riverside parkland golf course. And past the rough, a '70s pornstar look, so that golf balls can be swallowed whole. "All Hail Linda Lovelace!"
Icing on a birthday cake made of feces: A ten million dollar clubhouse to air condition the back sweat of slightly overweight investment bankers in Barney's golf shorts, not the average man's damp Dockers. It's as if public golf in America was destined to cut off another path for growing the game of golf beyond the stagnant 26 million players. The greens fees will likely be more in line with the dinner receipts of lower-Manhattan private equity denizens than the sanitation worker in Riverdale.
My only hope remains, amongst my lewd cynicism, that the greens fees will be around $40, as was proposed early in the project's press releases. And maybe the routing will allow me to walk rather than take a ride on a magical golf cart tour of an overpriced excavation project. We don't need another $75-per-round (local's discount) Harbor Shores (Benton Harbor, Michigan) built in the midst of pollution and American poverty, especially if the project's beneficiaries are going to be the same people that already bilked tax payers in the banking crisis.
Further reading:
http://golfweek.com/news/2012/jan/13/trump-goes-his-gut-ferry-point/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574449402598061912.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-collins/donald-trump-hits-hole-in_b_1216505.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/nyregion/plan-for-trump-to-run-bronx-golf-course-has-critics.html