Meadowlands resort dream taking shape

Sunday, May 6, 2001

By HUGH R. MORLEY
Staff Writer

Like the king of the hill, Bill Gauger stood atop a 100-foot high trash mountain in North Arlington and laid out his vision for a chunk of the Meadowlands below.

A light wind billowed through the dry swamp grass as Gauger, the president of developer EnCap Golf Inc., sketched out the company's $1 billion plan to transform the mess of disjointed trash heaps, industrial debris, and swamps into a golfers' paradise and more.

Here would be a marina. There a hotel and offices. Here he would demolish 10 electricity pylons at a cost of $2 million, just because they ruin the view. There he would move three radio towers -- at a cost of $5 million -- and build train stations, hotels, a holiday village.

"Just imagine people flying over," Gauger said one recent morning. "This is the main entry corridor for people coming into Newark. Imagine seeing 1,200 acres here of green open space -- of golf course holes. It'll change the whole perception of what we have here."

If Gauger sounds giddy with excitement, he is not alone. Since the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission announced its plan last May to turn six old landfills into a top-of-the-line golf resort, Bergen County officials, too, have seemed downright euphoric about the proposal.

If all goes as planned, the Meadowlands by 2010 will be host to something akin to a golfers' Disneyland -- with 72 holes of golf, two hotels, boating and equestrian facilities, and a conference center -- all within easy access of New York City.

But some officials, while supportive of the plan, are skeptical -- worried that Gauger's alchemist-like promise to turn trash into treasure is almost too good to be true.

What happens to the plan if the economy tanks, they wonder? Can EnCap really raise the extraordinary amounts of money needed to pull it off? And will the company be able to secure the permits to develop around an environmentally sensitive area?

"It sounds like a wonderful fantasy . . . a Utopian vision for south Bergen," said Freeholder Chairman Doug Bern. "But there is a big gap between talking about the concept and actually implementing it."

To project boosters, however, these concerns are no more than modest obstacles. At a stroke, they say, the plan could turn the decades-old problem of smelly, toxic, and ugly trash fields into a commercial boom zone while preserving what's left of the precious environment around it, including the broad scenic vistas of Manhattan.

And, as outlined by state and EnCap officials, most of the project would be privately funded.

"This is like your wildest dreams," North Arlington Mayor Len Kaiser said. "Hand to God! Sometimes I take pause and say, 'Am I dreaming? Or is it something that's being proposed?' "

In addition, the project could bail the county out of its long and troubled tenure in the trash business by helping to pay off nearly $100 million in debts held by the Bergen County Utilities Authority.

With the debt erased, the county could close its North Arlington Transfer Station, which now must remain open to raise revenue to pay the debt. The county could then withdraw from the solid waste business and lease the transfer station to EnCap for use in its project.

That scenario, however, requires that the BCUA find enough money to pay off the debt -- which is by no means certain. HMDC documents obtained by The Record this year outlined a preliminary plan to repay the debt. According to the plan, EnCap would pay $26 million, and the BCUA would contribute $38 million. In addition, there would be $10 million from funds held by the HMDC to pay for landfill closure and $7 million from a county recycling program. The HMDC and state combined would pay $13 million.

HMDC and county officials have declined to comment on the funding because they are still negotiating with the state over its share of the project.

If the $100 million cannot be raised and the transfer station is not closed, EnCap would have to scale back the project. Gauger, however, is unperturbed.

His Tampa, Fla.-based company would not have spent $4 million already just to research and plan the project if it was not confident of pulling it off, he said.

Besides, "We're going to offer a unique product that's going to have a lot of demand and appeal," said Gauger, 40. "I don't know too many golf courses that have views of Manhattan . . . There is nothing like this in the entire world!"

A $1 billion golf,

hotel, office project

On a recent tour of the site -- as he uttered a string of observations that mostly concluded with the exclamation "Spectacular!" -- Gauger offered the most detailed outline to date of the tentatively titled Meadowlands Golf Resort and Village Project.

The complex would have two entrances -- one off a Route 3 service road in Rutherford and one on Belleville Turnpike in North Arlington. It would cover nearly 1,000 acres of landfills in Rutherford, Lyndhurst, and North Arlington as well as marshlands on the Hackensack River.

The project is designed in two phases. If the first goes ahead as planned, the company expects to move on to the second.

Included in the Phase One plans, at a cost of $1 billion, are:

A 400-room, four- or five-star hotel adjacent to a 750,000 square foot office.

Resort village with a landscaped square, five to 10 restaurants and, 10 to 15 boutiques.

Conference center adjacent to a 250-room hotel and spa.

Two new train stations, one on the Bergen County Line and the other on the Main Line, to bring in workers to the offices and golfers to the resort. EnCap says it will fund one station and hopes to get state money to build the second.

Two golf courses; at least one would be a public and charge about $100 a round. Plans also call for a driving range and a golf school.

A marina on the Hackensack River with dry dock storage for 200 or more boats.

A 1,400-room holiday time-share complex.

Phase Two would cost an additional $200 million to $300 million. Included would be:

Two additional golf courses.

An equestrian center and sports complex, which might include ice skating, roller skating, tennis, or an indoor swimming center.

EnCap officials estimate that if all goes according to plan, the company will begin sealing the first three landfills at the end of this year. About 18 months later, construction would start on the hotels and offices.

The company expects the first hole to be played in 2005, with other parts of the project unfolding in the following years.

Sticking to the schedule, however, will require deft maneuvering through a number of project hurdles. One step that bogs down many projects is the state's environmental permitting process.

But HMDC and EnCap officials say the state Department of Environmental Protection has been briefed on the project throughout the planning process and supports it.

"We feel its a good initiative," said Bruce Witkowski, a supervisor in the DEP division of solid and hazardous waste. "It will get some landfills closed and we will get some recreational use out of it, too." Witkowski said he anticipates the project will be looked on favorably when EnCap applies for permits. HMDC Executive Director Alan Steinberg said the project will require state permits for waterfront development and landfill closure.

The HMDC has final say on zoning and planning issues in the Meadowlands.

"There's no doubt whatsoever" that EnCap will get HMDC approval, Steinberg said.

In March, EnCap was granted a waterfront development permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to cover the small amount of wetlands that will be touched by the project, Gauger said. Getting the approval was easier than for other Meadowlands projects, Gauger said, because the wetlands had already been contaminated by garbage dumping.

As far as funding, Gauger said EnCap has overcome the most difficult task -- securing the first 20 percent of the project cost from willing investors. He said he is confident the company will be able to raise the remaining funds, because he has already gotten significant interest from venture partners looking to develop the hotels, offices, and other buildings at their own expense.

Conservationists

resigned to plan

County Executive William "Pat" Schuber, for one, is convinced the company has a good chance of success.

"Is there risk? Yes, there is risk," he said. "But this is a case where I don't necessarily think there's a lot to lose. What you've got now is a dump. Anything that they are starting to do is an improvement."

But that attitude is not shared by local conservationists, who worry that development will damage wetlands. They would rather see the upland landfills turned into a forested, natural habitat where birds, opossums, skunks, and other wildlife can live.

"Golf courses are nice," said Capt. Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper. "But it's more overdevelopment of the Meadowlands. We've already got way too much development."

Nevertheless, he and other environmentalists -- mindful of the fact that leachate is steadily seeping from the landfills into the Meadowlands waterways -- seem grudgingly resigned to the project.

"We've got to bite the bullet and get the landfills capped," Sheehan said. "The landfills are poisoning the area."

The project is one of the latest in a growing number of proposals and developments around the country that have seized on closed landfills to combat a shortage of space, especially around cities.

In New Jersey, two other landfill-based golf courses are planned or under construction. One is planned for 179 acres of landfill in Egg Harbor Township just outside Atlantic City. An 18-hole course is under way on a 70-acre municipal landfill and adjoining brownfields property in Bayonne.

"It's the wave of the future," Witkowski said. "It seems like all of a sudden everybody got an idea to build golf courses on a landfill."

Yet on the national stage, there have been similar projects for years. Gauger said he knows of 63 golf courses built on landfills, the first of which was probably at Brooklyn's Marine Park, built in 1963. At present, golf courses are planned or under construction in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit, with two more in the works for Houston, according to published reports.

In most cases, the transformation from trash field to links is a complicated, time-consuming, and expensive process. The landfill must be left to settle for about a decade, shaped, and implanted with a piping system to siphon off the methane or other gases given off by the decaying trash. After that, the trash is covered with plastic sheeting or impermeable clay.

A drainage ditch is then dug along the perimeter to catch the leachate or contaminated water that seeps out. And the garbage-filled mound is overlaid with soil on which grass and trees are planted and bunkers and ponds carved.

Because most of the Meadowlands landfills stopped accepting trash around 1970 -- several decades after they opened -- the settling period is already over. Only the 1E landfill in North Arlington shut down for business less than a decade ago, with parts of it remaining open until 1997, HMDC officials said. But EnCap officials say it will likely be ready for development in less than a decade after closing, because the most recent dumping was of construction material, which needs less time to settle than household trash.

Developer confident

of financial backing

The logic of sticking fairways and greens on fouled land -- especially close to urban areas -- is not difficult to understand given the surging demand for golf courses in areas with few large, developable tracts. Bergen County, for instance, has long sought to meet what officials say is a chronic shortage of golf courses. The efforts have been stymied by a lack of open space.

"Our feasibility [study] tells us that there is a demand for something in the order of 60 to 100 golf courses in the metropolitan area," Gauger said. "There's demand but you can't have the supply because there's not enough land. Golf courses take a huge amount of property."

And in most urban areas, any developable property has invariably been taken or is too highly priced, he said.

"If this wasn't a landfill, this wouldn't be golf," Gauger said simply. "This would be a housing development here, office buildings."

EnCap's first venture into the transformation of waste sites was in creating one of the landfill-based golf courses under construction in Houston. Set to open late this year, the $25 million project will provide 36 holes on 450 acres of a former oilfield near the Astrodome and includes what visitors describe as some of the most elevated, striking views of the city.

EnCap grew out of a three-year-old investment bank -- Environmental Capital International of Florida. Specializing in the development of brownfields, ECI has loaned or invested more than $300 million over the years, mostly to gas station owners who have to clean up their property. EnCap takes the process one step further -- it carries out remediation projects instead of merely funding them.

HMDC Chief Alan Steinberg and EnCap officials brush off doubts as to whether the company can pull off the Meadowlands project by citing the strength of EnCap's financial backers.

The founder and largest investor in both ECI and EnCap is Louis L. Gonda, a Beverly Hills real estate billionaire who last year was ranked 129 among Forbes' 400 richest people in America.

Another investor in the project, Denver-based Cherokee Investment Partners, offers a resume that includes funding environmental remediation projects valued at $300 million, including the Bayonne landfill-to-links project. The company calls itself the "largest brownfield investment fund and the largest provider of environmental insurance for brownfields in the world."

EnCap got involved in the Meadowlands when it was one of eight companies that responded to an effort by the HMDC in 1999 to find a developer willing to convert three, 30-foot-high landfills in Rutherford and Lyndhurst into a golf course.

EnCap was selected. But the company's plan changed when Gauger happened to walk one day to the top of the 100-foot high Kingsland Landfill in adjacent North Arlington and was stunned by the views of Manhattan and Newark. Immediately, he said, he saw the possibilities of creating a far larger project.

One reason, he said, is what golfers call the "viewshed" -- or the scenery around them while they are swinging.

"The viewshed is spectacular," he said.

But the economics of the project also made it necessary to include more development, Gauger said. With EnCap expecting to spend between $75 million and $100 million on capping and sealing the landfills, new revenue streams are needed to bring in funding, Gauger said.

"Golf courses don't pay for it," Gauger said. "You've got to have office space, you've got to have hotels, you've got to have timeshare, those kinds of things.You've got to have a resort complex."