With a decade of missteps behind it, Ferry Point, the long-awaited golf course on a former landfill on the edge of the East River in the Bronx, is well underway.
The routing for the course is complete and construction is transforming 185 acres of tree-less land into an Irish links-style golf course. The layout is a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course design in collaboration with Sanford Golf Design, a Jupiter, Fla., company whose principal is architect John Sanford. Sanford is also the Project Manager.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Nicklaus said the wide open site is ideally suited for a challenging links-style course that will be open and playable for the public but capable of staging major tournaments as envisioned by the Bloomberg Administration.
He said rather than go in and plant 10,000 trees that would take decades to mature, a links design lends itself to what he referred to as a “now course.”
“Now courses are ones that look like they have been there forever,” Nicklaus said adding that the design will create a course tough enough to challenge professional play but one that everyday players can enjoy as well.
Sanford said building the course on a former municipal solid waste dump also has design advantages. “The City has been bringing fill material to this site for the past 10 years,” he said. “so we have plenty of material to create landforms emulating an Irish links course. I think that will separate this golf course from others. Shaping the landforms to the strategy that Jack is supplying us with will create risk-reward possibilities to make it special.”
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