$1.5B Golf Course Project Will Get Second Phase

Pending approval of the two-phase project, EnCap officials won't comment on the total cost or other details beyond those already made public. Earlier statements from the Tampa, FL-based company have put that number in the $1.5 billion range. As suggested by its name, EnCap has specialized in redeveloping brownfield sites, as this is, as mixed-use golf-based projects.

In its earlier proposal, EnCap announced plans to build the two courses within a sprawling 900-acre tract of closed garbage dumps it owns in this city and the neighboring communities of Lyndhurst, North Arlington and Kearny. The courses would surround a 98-acre "village" consisting of some 1,500 residential units, four eight-story office buildings and 100,000 sf of retail space, including several restaurants. The company brought in New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects, whose credits include Walt Disney World's Celebration Village in Orlando, FL, to design the village core.

To that, the latest proposal includes two more golf courses. The plan as currently submitted is to break ground this fall on the first phase, according to papers filed with the NJMDC. With work still barely underway, EnCap plans to break ground on the second phase in early or mid-spring of next year.

The project figures to help the Garden State in several ways, including turning the former garbage dumps into verdant golf courses. Susan Bass Levin, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, who has been actively involved in the state's negotiations with EnCap, puts the immediate monetary benefit to the cash-strapped state government in the $40 million range: The agreement coming before the NJMDC for a vote calls for the developer to pay the state $18 million for the first phase and $22 million for phase two. EnCap will also pay to have the site remediated, the estimated cost of which has not been disclosed.

"This would be the largest brownfields redevelopment project in New Jersey," says Levin of the project, which will have close-up views of the Manhattan skyline. The proposal first surfaced in the spring of 2000, and the formal first-phase plan was announced last year.