Rocco Cambareri, who died last year after a career as a head pro at courses in Westchester County, N.Y., had created a development company to create a new 9-hole, par-3 course on the site of the former Shallow Creek Golf Course, which closed in 2007. Yorktown officials are now working with a partner of Cambareri’s to extend the time for development, and efforts continue to obtain grants and raise funds, in addition to $250,000 secured from a Foundation three years ago.
Plans are still afoot to try to create a nine-hole, par-3 public golf course on a 12-acre property in Yorktown, N.Y. that once was the site of the Shallow Creek Golf Course, reported LoHud.com, the website of The Journal News of Westchester, N.Y.
The town of Yorktown, which continues to own the property just east of the Taconic State Parkway, has a licensing agreement to create a new course with RC Recreation Development, which was established by resident Rocco Cambareri, a head golf professional whose career included years at the Maple Moor and Saxon Woods golf courses in White Plains, N.Y. and Scarsdale, N.Y., LoHud.com reported.
Cambareri, who died last year, “was fulfilling his dream” of developing the course, according to his obituary, through a plan that called for naming it Valley Fields Golf Course, LoHud.com reported.
Diana Quast, Yorktown’s Recreation Commission chairwoman, told LoHud.com that Cambareri’s partner in the project, Larry Nussbaum, has indicated he would like to continue the work.
Yorktown’s Town Board voted this month to extend the length of its agreement with RC Recreation Development to develop the property and operate it, LoHud.com reported, with Quast saying the agreement will now run to 2028. A nonprofit has begun doing fundraising/grant-seeking for the project, Quast added.
But details of the continued effort were scant, LoHud.com reported; Nussbaum and a lawyer whom Quast said is working with him could not be reached for comment.
“It had been sort of on hold,” Town Supervisor Ilan Gilbert told LoHud.com, adding that the Town Board sees the project as a positive.
The site, which is bordered on the north by a service road and is now used by commuters as a park-and-ride area, has its challenges, LoHud.com reported.
“There are lots of wetlands,” Gilbert said. The most recent golf course proposal included being environmentally friendly by removing some invasive-species vegetation, he said.
Returning the property to some kind of public use has proved elusive for years, as proposals came and went, LoHud.com reported.
In 1995, there was talk of a strip mall and in 2004, there was a plan for a sports dome. The property was donated to the town after the Shallow Creek course closed in 2007, and in the summer of 2011, a plan would have made it into a family-fun center with a driving range, laser tag, mini-golf and the like.
Then town officials moved forward with the plan by Cambareri for the Valley Fields Golf Course.
In 2015, the Wadsworth Golf Charities Foundation awarded the project a $250,000 grant, according to the Valley Fields Golf Course Facebook page, LoHud.com reported.
In 2016, students in carpentry classes at a local school donated nine park benches to the property, and Quast said there has been other work on the site to prep it as well.
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