Work Starts on $630M Condo and Golf Community

The developer is actually a partnership between Boston-based Willowbend Development, a company owned by Reebok International chairman Paul Foreman that specializes in golf course projects, and the Hoboken-based Applied Development, a residential specialist. The cost of the golf course, which is being designed by architect Robert Cupp and professional golfer Tom Kite, has been tagged at $130 million.

The condo towers, called the Residences at Liberty, will cost an estimated $500 million. The Seattle-based NBBJ Architects, which coincidentally designed Reebok's headquarters in Canton, MA, has signed on to design the towers. That design, according to an Applied Development spokesperson, will feature "a unified sail shape."

The site is wedged between the existing Port Liberte, a gated low-rise condominium community, and Liberty State Park. The project's waterfront will include a public walkway. Work will continue on the golf course even as site remediation begins, according to Willowbend officials. According to state officials, the remediation effort was personally signed off on by Brad Campbell, commissioner of the New Jersey DEP, who calls the plan "adequately protective."

The site's checkered industrial past includes its use, for many years, as a tank farm by Esso and its successor, ExxonMobil. Portions of the site are also laced with chromium emanating from an adjacent Pittsburgh Plate Glass plant, which shut down many years ago. DEP analysis of the site has also turned up substantial quantities of arsenic and other metals, as well as waste oil. The approved plan calls for covering portions of the site with plastic and capping all of it with soil, and drainage wells. Cost of the remediation hasn't been disclosed.

The golf course portion of the project is expected to be completed in time for the 2006 season, according to a Willowbend spokesperson. The initial condo tower is slated to be ready for occupancy in 2007.