Ferry Point Park
BRONX, N.Y. - 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 eye-catching 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.
Ferry Point marks the second time Sanford has teamed up with Nicklaus and his company to bring in a new golf course. The two have known each other for years and Sanford is the Design Associate on a Nicklaus Design course for a major golf-hotel development, the Palm Hills Golf Resort opening this year in Cairo, Egypt.
“I have great respect for John as a person and a designer. This is a Signature Golf Course, but John is an important part of this process. I think John and I have a mutual working relationship, where I am going to be the lead designer but if there are places where John can add to it or contribute-very similar to the way one of my Design Associates would work-then I will absolutely listen and take into consideration everything he says”.
Before following Nicklaus into his own career as a successful golf course designer, Sanford played junior golf with Nicklaus’ oldest son, Jack II.
“I’ve known the Nicklaus family for years and was always amazed by the amount of time Jack was able to dedicate to his family,” he said.
At Ferry Point Sanford is coordinating the work of eight consultants, including Nicklaus Design, engineers, landscape architects, architects, and surveyors among others.
“The site is most special,” Sanford said. “It is a former landfill in a spectacular location. It borders the East river on the south side, it is at the base of the Whitestone Bridge on the Bronx side, and most of the 18 holes have spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline.”
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. He said the design will create a course tough enough to challenge professional play but one that everyday players can enjoy and keep coming back.
Sanford said building the course on a former municipal solid waste dump 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.”
Because the site is a former landfill it also presents environmental challenges. Sanford believes the experience he gained building the award-winning Granite Links Golf Club on a landfill in Quincy, Massachusetts, a few years ago, helped his company’s bid for the prestigious Ferry Point assignment.
Sanford Golf Design used 10 million cubic yards of dirt dug from Boston’s mega underground highway project nicknamed the “Big Dig” to cover the Quincy landfill. Reclamation projects like Granite Links and Ferry Point are especially satisfying, Sanford said.
“Unlike a park, a golf course will create revenue for the City and we are transforming a degraded piece of land into a beautiful landscape,” he said.
Sanford founded Sanford Golf Design in 1987. The company has completed major projects in the United States, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean. The Sanford team consists of golf and landscape architects, as well as construction management professionals.
Juliette Falls Golf Club in Dunnellon Ocala, Fla., is one of Sanford’s latest award- winning designs, recognized by Golf Digest and Golf magazine as one of the Top 10 new courses in America. Another award-winner is the Granite Links Golf Club which was included on Golf Digest’s Top 10 new upscale courses list in 2007, as well as being ranked No. 73 on the magazine’s Top 100 public courses in 2009. The Taba Heights Golf Resort in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula was a 2009 finalist for Golf Inc.’s International Development of the Year.
