Donald Trump is poised to manage the city’s long-delayed PGA-regulation golf course in The Bronx for virtually no money down, city records show.
Last month, the Parks Department granted The Donald’s firm a 20-year deal to operate the course at Ferry Point, a publicly funded $184 million Throggs Neck waterfront redevelopment project that also includes a park and an esplanade.
Under terms of the sweetheart deal, he doesn’t have to pay the city a penny for the first four years.
Instead, Trump will build a $10 million clubhouse for the course, which he hopes will attract top tournaments when it opens, in 2014.
“We are paying [$184 million for] the project. Trump is getting a gift from a fellow billionaire, the mayor,” said Geoffrey Croft, of watchdog group NYC Park Advocates. “It’s unheard of that you don’t pay any money for four years.”
By year five, Trump will have to pay only 7 percent of the gross receipts, or a minimum of $300,000. And by year 16, he pays just 10 percent, or $420,000, to the city.
The city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee is set to approve the deal today.
It will cost $125 to play a round of golf on a weekend day at the Ferry Point course, compared with $36 at other city courses.
Vickie Karp, a spokeswoman for the Parks Department, said, “Our goal is to provide a public service, not to seek a return on an investment.”
In 1998, then-Mayor Giuliani announced plans to turn 190 of 222 acres at a former Throgs Neck landfill into a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course with the rest to be converted into community park space. The estimated cost was then $22.4 million – and it was to be picked up by a private developer who was supposed to build it by 2001.
But by 2009, the Post reported Ferry Point had swelled to roughly $120 million in costs — with taxpayers now picking up the tab. Today, the development is now expected to cost a whopping $184 million — including $97 million for the course, city records show.
“It’s a major money pit that’ll cater to the rich and does little for most of the community nearby,” Croft said.
Much of the cost overruns and delays are due to rising construction costs, a pricey environmental cleanup of toxic soil and the use of by mob-connected truckers early on the job.
Nearly $15 million already spent by the city was paid to Pierre Gagne, the Giuliani-selected developer who walked out on the project in 2006 because of rising costs, forcing Mayor Bloomberg to have the city pay for it.
Ironically, $6.2 million paid to Gagne was to settle lawsuits ensued after the company accepted 2.5 million cubic yards of fill to help cover the one-time landfill. FBI wiretaps captured one mob-connected trucker boasting about collecting $5 for every cubic yard dumped.
City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe defended the rising costs, saying even though the city is spending “tens of millions of dollars” to clean up the site, Ferry Point is being built at a cost “significantly less per acre than for many of our other new park projects.”
The surrounding neighborhoods have mixed opinions on Ferry Point.
Many low-income residents living in housing projects northeast of the site say golf is too expensive a sport for them to take up and that they would be better off with a larger community park.
However, homeowners who invested in gated riverfront communities southeast of the site, in anticipation of property values skyrocketing, desperately want the course completed.
Officials said city golfers would be charged $125 per round on weekends and $100 weekdays.
Councilman James Vacca (D-Bronx), who’s been fighting to build a golf course at Ferry Point since 1979 and owns a home a few miles away, said he believes his district is better off with the course than a larger community park because it already has more parkland than most parts of the Bronx.