Golf Community with Jack Nicklaus Golf Course proposed for West Dover Road in Pawling and Dover
www.mayacama.com
www.springisland.com
www.chaffinlight.com
By John M. Benson
August 30, 2007
At a joint meeting of the Dover and Pawling Town Boards and Planning Boards at Lakeside Park on August 30th, the board and community members heard the first public presentation of a concept to develop land that lies in both Pawling and Dover on West Dover Road.
Partners David Wilhelm, Jim Light and Jim Chaffin, Project Manager Jeff Jones, described the project being considered.
The development would be what the partners call a “lodging club”, a vacation community centered around a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the former Starkdale Farm property and other land on West Dover Road.
Wilhelm said later that the group is interested in acquiring what is now Lumelite in the Village of Pawling, and building an inn with 20 to 25 rooms and a restaurant on that site.
According to the Power Point presentation at this public meeting, the partners represent The Wilhelm Family Partnership and Chaffin/Light Associates.
See the full Power Point Presentation
To locate the property being considered, use the website provided by Dutchess County, and in both Pawling and Dover, type in “Starkdale” to search for a property by the owner:
http://geoaccess.co.dutchess.ny.us/parcelaccess/
The co-chairs of the meeting were Pawling Town Supervisor Beth Coursen and Dover Town Supervisor Jill Way.
Jill Way opened the meeting by saying, “Good evening. This evening, we are very fortunate to have a joint meeting of the Town of Pawling and the Town of Dover Town Boards, the Town of Dover Planning Board and the Town of Pawling Planning Board, to talk about an exciting new proposal which spans both of our borders on West Dover Road. I am going to call the official meeting to order. It has been noticed in both the Town of Dover and the Town of Pawling by the clerks of both of our towns. Would everyone please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance?”
Beth Coursen added, “I am going to ask that everyone please remain standing for a few moments after the Pledge of Allegiance. There are many members of our community who are engaged in active duty in the Armed Forces. It is thanks to their willingness to stand in harm’s way that we are free to assemble here tonight.”
Coursen said that she and Way had invited the partners to present their concept in this format before the public and the various boards, and said further, “Jeff Jones, David Wilhelm, Jim Light and Jim Chaffin came to town a number of weeks ago, and they were encouraged by both Jill Way and myself to begin what I like to call a community conversation. This is a large project. It is going to significantly impact both communities. We will need to go through a very formal review process called the SEQR process. But we asked the partners to begin this process with a conversation, with a dialogue, and so we thank you for coming here tonight.”
Way has told the Harlem Valley Herald since the meeting, “Based upon last evening’s meeting, I am very encouraged by the willingness of Mr. Light and Mr. Wilhelm and Mr. Chaffin to run an open and transparent public process, and to meet with the various boards, villages and towns and members of the public prior to even designing the facility. It is completely encouraging to see a potential applicant come into a community and ask the community what their needs are, and to listen to what is important to us prior to starting a plan and/or finalizing a plan or an application or submission. I am very encouraged by the proposal.”
Coursen also commented following the meeting, telling the Herald, “I look forward to an ongoing community dialogue with the developers of the former Starkdale Farm. The number of people who came to the meeting is indicative of the level of interest in this property and its’ impact on our communities. The developers’ willingness to meet this early with all the boards and members of the community is appreciated. The overview and introduction on August 30th provide the framework for all to understand each others interests. The SEQRA process will provide the format for a full review of all the proposed projects impacts. Given the number of boards that will be involved in project review I am especially pleased that all boards are willing to work cooperatively on this formal review. A more meaningful and thorough review is possible with this cooperative effort on the part of all boards. In doing this, the proposed projects impact on our environment, economy and community fabric can be reviewed as a whole rather than piecemeal. The ongoing joint meetings of various boards also provide the potential for future intermunicipal cooperative efforts. As the boards continue our work together on project review opportunities for future cooperative efforts that will benefit all our residents may become apparent.”
Following the presentation by the partners, Pawling Planning Board Chairman Kent Johnson asked when the partners expect to have the first draft of a plan ready for presentation.
Wilhelm answered, “I would say probably between 90 and 120 days. We have mapped the wetlands on the property. We have had the architects from the Nicklaus company out here. They are going to show us a couple of plans next week. From that point we will get the land planning architects together and do a massive study. So, we will probably be back within about 90 to 120 days.”
Coursen followed Wilhelm’s comment by saying, “That preliminary plan is the formal submission to the various boards. That is part of the SEQR process. This project is subject to review by at least three and possibly four boards, which can make it complicated. In theory, four boards could appoint four different consultants to review the information, which could unnecessarily lengthen and complicate the review process. That is one of the things that Jill and I have had conversation about. I am hoping that tonight that we can amongst the various boards reach an agreement to meet in the coming weeks with Pace Land Use Law Center to review the various options that are available for a project of this size and scope, and that we can proceed in a manner that will ensure a thorough review but will also assure a coordinated process. I am hoping that we can reach that agreement here tonight.”
Following the presentation, Coursen asked the board members present to each make a comment on the presentation and the proposed project.
Overall, the board members said that they are encouraged by the presentation, but that they are unable to make any substantive comment without the benefit of any formal application or plans before them.
During public comment, community members voiced everything from excitement over the prospect of this project, to concern that the project will do nothing more than introduce a gated community to the area with a lot of low-paying or minimum-wage jobs that will not benefit the local community. One member of the public pointed out that there are strict regulations on the placement of development within the view-shed of the Appalachian Trail that lies to the south of the former Starkdale Farm.
As to the matter of the ‘gated community’, the partners said that the community will not be gated, and that members of the public who are not owners of property in the development will have the opportunity to hold club memberships.
The Presentation
Partners David Wilhelm, Jim Light and Jim Chaffin spoke in turn during the presentation. Wilhelm described the specific project being considered on West Dover Road, Light addressed the community involvement of the partners and residents in the other developments built by the partnership, and Chaffin explained the philosophy of the partnership in terms of economic viability, environmental sensitivity, and community livability.
Excerpts from David Wilhelm’s opening comments:
We thank Supervisors Beth Coursen and Jill Way for their gracious hospitality to date, and for arranging this meeting with you all tonight. We want to thank you all for coming out tonight. We want to listen to your thoughts, what you have to say, because we have a philosophy in our company that we do not want to develop in communities where we are not welcome or wanted. There are lots of good reasons why developers are not welcome or wanted, and most of the time they are probably very good reasons.
We think we have an exciting proposal. We are going to share it with you. We certainly are very interested in the feedback from the various Town Boards and the constituents who live here. We are new in town, and you have been here for a long time, so we hope we are welcome, and we are going to tell you what we are thinking about doing.
We have assembled approximately 850 acres of land about a mile up the street on West Dover Road. It consists of the Starkdale Farm, and the Boniello property that was pretty far along in the Town of Pawling planning process for a subdivision. We have acquired that Boniello property and a small parcel next to it.
The Starkdale property is under a two-year option. We will close on that tract somewhere between six and eighteen months.
What we are planning to do that was appealing to both Beth and Jill, and I think some of their Town Board members that we have spoken with, is what we refer to as a “lodging club”. We have developed two of these lodging clubs, the Roaring Fork Club near Aspen in Basalt, Colorado, and Mayacama in the Sonoma wine country in California. They are both on the websites, and we will give you those websites tonight.
www.roaringforkclub.com
www.mayacama.com
Essentially, these clubs have been positioned as guest houses. In Aspen, it is a series of log cabins with guest houses. A great many of your affluent people today are not interested in taking care of these properties. The average second home is used about 30 days a year, and there are a lot of expenses associated with that, plus the use of energy, and it is sort of a waste.
Our thought on this property is to build a Jack Nicklaus championship signature golf course (http://www.nicklaus.com/). We will only build these kinds of properties as clubs on just great land.
Brian McGrath of Prudential Serls, one of your local realtors, presented us this property. It has a great roll, it is large enough, and we can build put lakes on it, as well as a superb golf course. This golf course community would be the same level of quality as the Wingfoot, Quaker Ridge, Westchester Country Club and so forth. It will be a really high quality, terrific golfing experience.
In addition to the club, we will create in the neighborhood of 125 to 150 cottages. We build them all. We limit the size of the units on the property, and each cottage would have a guest house.
Generally, we intend to fractionalize the majority of these properties. By fractionalizing we mean, we will sell four families a quarter interest in each cottage. We do this because we want to keep the club active. We are not interested in having 125 to 150 families own one cottage and it is empty half the time, although we are told that a lot of people from New York come up every single weekend, and that may be the case. But we want to the club to be vibrant and active. That way, we keep the staff busy, the chef busy, and the whole place just works better and is a lot more fun. Our objective is to balance the amount of play and activity at the club so the club functions the way we would like it to function.
In our clubs in both California and Colorado, there are no school children from the families that own the properties. I know this is an important situation in Pawling and Dover, because of the cost of educating the children, so we don’t impact the towns with respect to school children. We generally take care of our own roads because they are private roads.
So, we will pay a lot of taxes, and we won’t affect the town very much on a financial basis, which is apparently very appealing to this community.
Another area that we are focusing on is the internal transportation. In our two communities in California and Colorado, golf carts are the main transportation, so we limit the size of the roads. The properties do not have garages, so they are really not permanent homes. We do not want it to look like and feel like a subdivision.
We cluster as much as possible. It is better for the feeling that we are trying to create, and it keeps more open space on the land.
Jobs. We would expect to create approximately 250 permanent jobs, and in addition, we will have a lot of part-time work. At both of our clubs, we have a caddy program, and we sponsor the local golf teams. We are part of the Evans Scholarship Foundation program (http://www.evansscholarsfoundation.com/. It is amazing, in little Basalt, Colorado, a town of 3,000 people, we have had six former caddies receive full scholarships to the University of Colorado. They are good jobs for the kids, and it is fun, and we want to repeat that here.
Because you have a train right here in town, we are really going to encourage our members to take the train. We are going to have a fleet of automobiles, so they can come up on the train, and if they want to drive around the countryside, they will just use one of our cars. We also hope to develop a way for our members to walk or ride a bicycle into the towns.
Lastly, and I think this is very important for you all to be aware of, this is a long-term asset for us. It will probably take between five and eight years to develop the property fully. We continue to own it and manage it, so we will be part of your community for a long, long time. With subdivisions, they build the houses and they leave. We are going to be here for a long time.
We want to be part of the community, and my partners Jim Chaffin and Jim Light will tell you how we have partnered with the communities we have worked in. We are proud of what people say about us, and I think people generally like the fact that we have developed our properties in their communities, and they say pretty good things about us.
Jim Light
Light described the range of activities and institutions by which the company, the golf communities and the members become connected to the communities around them, and make contributions of many kinds of significant magnitude to those communities.
Websites for review:
www.springisland.com
www.chaffinlight.com
Excerpts from Light’s comments:
In Spring Island, which is in South Carolina near Hilton Head, in Roaring Fork Club, which is in the Aspen area near a little town called Basalt, and in Balsam Mountain Preserve, http://balsammountainpreserve.com/, we have started in those areas four environmental non-profits. There is a variety of reasons that we do that. One is to create for ourselves a knowledge of the land that we develop and how to operate it and take care of it. But more than anything else, it is because we are dedicated to education. We want to educate our members about what is special about the environment, so that they learn to appreciate it and take care of it.
We also have outreach programs in the local schools. For example, at the Roaring Fork Conservancy in Colorado, we have a full-time educator on that staff. We have funded those in part with transfer assessments that we impose on ourselves and the people who buy real estate from us, so that we have a mechanism to have ongoing funding. There is information on the websites about those trusts if you are interested.
As an example, in Colorado, the property is 300 acres outside of the small town of Basalt. We did not want to be perceived as an affluent community on the outskirts of town. We wanted to feel very much integrated into the town. So, we did a number of things, including the golf scholarship program called the Evans Scholarship. Our club members give more to that program than any other club in the State of Colorado, and it has paid off, because several of our kids who have been caddies have gotten full scholarships to college.
There is a philosophic view we have taken quite seriously throughout our careers, and that is being an integral part of the communities in which we are involved. We are not involved with that many communities. We have a limited number of projects, and we perceive ourselves more as craftsmen than as business people.
Excerpts from Jim Chaffin’s comments
I want to thank you for allowing us to explore possibilities with you, and for coming here to share with us your thoughts, and letting us explore with you possibilities for what is clearly your community.
What we are about is creating authentic, natural and livable places, not to improve upon what is here, but to offer people another opportunity to experience what you all experience every day. There is a reason you live here. You like living here. We believe there are other people who want to enjoy the same things, and we simply want to give people more an opportunity to be here and enjoy what you enjoy.
‘Sustainability’ is an often used word. It is not very complicated. It is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to deal with their own needs. As Thomas Jefferson said a couple hundred years ago, ‘It is not the right of anyone to encumber the land beyond what can be unencumbered during his lifetime.’
‘Smart growth’ is another interesting catch term, but to us, it really is about balance. It is not about no growth, it is about managed growth. We look at it very much like a three a three-legged stool:
Economic Viability
Environmental Sensitivity
Community Livability
Often, one of those gets out of balance with another. When you think about the desire for intense environmental regulation and no growth, you begin to impact the economic viability, and you begin to impact the community livability. We believe all three are important.
I recently had the privilege of chairing the statewide commission in South Carolina for the governor and the legislature on smart growth recommendations for the state. Ten years ago, I had the privilege of chairing an organization called the Urban Land Institute (http://www.uli.org//AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home), a national and international think tank on responsible land use. It gave me the privilege of traveling around this country and internationally. What I want you to know, the thing that I took away from those 24 months, was first the passion of the people in each community I visited, and secondly that all of the communities, large and small and in this hemisphere or the other, were all grappling with these three issues, a balance between economic viability, environmental sensitivity, and community livability, and public officials grappling with the unintended consequences of what they really thought was the right action.
We are here to work with you and your officials, to try to figure out what that balance is for your community. When we talk about conservation-based development or environmental sensitivity, this is not a marketing euphemism for us. We would invite you to go to our websites, we would invite you to talk to people who live in our communities, and to understand that we believe this is not only the right thing to do, but we also believe it is economic self-enlightenment. It is ‘doing good by doing good’.
At Spring Island, the second employee we hired was a naturalist. He helped us understand what was there. We formed the Spring Island Trust. There is a transfer fee on every sale and every sale thereafter, that manages 1300 acres, not just open space that sits there, but manages that open space, provides environmental recreation and education, brings 1,000 school children every year to that education center. Most importantly there is an ethos, a culture that is important to our members. People who decide to be a part of our communities feel a great sense of pride that they are part of a sustainable community. These programs also go on at Balsam Mountain Preserve and in others of our communities. In each of our communities, there is a land management plan, and a group of scientists who meet twice a year to manage the land plan for that community. We ask ourselves the question, ‘What do we want this community to look like 25 years from now, 50 years from now, and what impact are we having on the greater region?’
What we would say to you this evening is that we plan to be transparent. We will be very open about the things that we are planning for this property, and we will welcome ideas and comments from you.
The next steps for us are figuring out what the land tells us. We have been asked when we are going to have a plan, and the answer is, we will have a plan as soon as we know what the land is telling us. It would be very presumptive of us to lay out diagrams without knowing about the biological, botanical, geological personality of the property. So we plan to be very sensitive to what is on the site, before we begin to lay out a land plan. We have a pretty good idea that what we are proposing is not going to overburden the property, but we will be sensitive as to where whatever is there is placed.
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