State Agency OKs $1B Mixed-Use Project

The scope of the $1 billion project, which will be situated generally to the south of the Meadowlands Sport Complex and the site of the proposed redevelopment of the Continental Airlines Arena, is massive. Besides four golf courses, the general plan calls for 700,000 sf of commercial recreation facilities, 750,000 sf of office space, 750 hotel rooms, 100,000 sf of retail space and nearly 2,000 residential units. Development partners are expected to be brought in for some of the non-golf components, but no specifics have been announced yet.

"This project demonstrates the goals of curbing sprawl, protecting the environment and focusing development on the revitalization of former landfills," according to Susan Bass Levin, commissioner of the state's Department of Community Affairs and chairperson of the NJMC. "It will create a sense of place."

The project is also complicated. As a trade-off, Encap will permanently preserve another 1,250 acres of former landfills straddling the New Jersey Turnpike just to the south and east. The company will also be responsible for closing and remediating seven landfills. That part of the project, which is expected to begin this summer, will cost $300 million and involve the use of four million yards of soil dredged from New York Harbor as part of the project to deepen and widen the harbor's channels.

Some $176 million in state bonds will help pay the bills, but besides paying the cost of remediation, Encap will make nearly $55 million in cash payments to the NJMC, pay $3 million in solid waste costs and $35 million in additional solid waste revenues to the agency, and pay the estimated $11 million it will take to buy privately owned land within the tract.

Also as part of Encap's agreement with the state agency, the company will build police substations and EMS stations in the towns of Rutherford and Lyndhurst, help buy new fire equipment for Lyndhurst, post a $1 million letter of credit for a possible school expansion and pay for transportation improvements relating to the ongoing development process.

But the hefty price tag is apparently worth it to Encap officials. In a written statement, the company calls the Meadowlands Golf Resort Village as "a milestone in the transformation of landfills in the Meadowlands…into a destination for tourists and residents." Levin, meanwhile, terms the project "the largest brownfields-to-greenfields redevelopment initiative in New Jersey."

If all goes well with the environmental portion of the sitework, not to mention the economy, Encap hopes to have construction of the first golf course underway by 2005. Completion of the entire project, pending the signing of development partners, is optimistically slated for mid-2007.