By John Burton
MIDDLETOWN – Ground is being broken and heavy equipment has moved in, marking the beginning of the long expected, but initially bitterly opposed large-scale residential project for the former Bamm Hollow country club and golf course.
Toll Brothers, headquartered in Horsham, Pa., and touted as the nation’s largest builders of luxury homes, has commenced site work, installing infrastructure, such as water and sewer lines at the approximately 280-acre location in the area of Middletown-Lincroft Road and Sunnyside Road.
The company is commencing with its first phase, constructing 68 homes of what will eventually be 190 high-end single-family dwellings on the site.
In the final analysis, “We think it will be a huge benefit to the community,” said Christopher Gaffney, Toll Brothers’ group president, speaking of the project.
The homes, Gaffney said, will range in size from 3,300 to 5,000 square feet and sit on lots spanning 20,000 square feet up to 2 acres. Prices on the homes are expected to start in the upper $800,000 range, to “up to a million dollars and possibly more,” Gaffney said, “depending on the size of the home, the location, the lot size.”
With shovels starting to hit the dirt this would seem to mark the final chapter in a long and torturous process between the township and the site’s former owners and developers, Bamm Hollow Investors, LLC.
The developers had purchased the longstanding country club and 27-hole golf course in January 2005. The developers proceeded to threaten a lawsuit against Middletown in 2009 and filed an objection with the state’s Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) charging the township failed to include this property in its tabulation for its obligation to provide low- and moderate-income housing in response to the state Supreme Court controversial Mount Laurel decision.
Bamm Hollow Investors at the time said it would seek to construct a high-density, multifamily residential development consisting of 1,204 units, a portion of which would be designated as affordable units.
Litigation and negotiation dragged on resulting in the township spending “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in legal fees, township attorney Brian Nelson acknowledged at the time. That resulted in a settlement with the developers in 2011 to allow 190 homes on the site.
Lawsuits like this “are really just a financial mechanism, that, unfortunately, the (state) Affordable Housing Act allowed developers to utilize to enrich themselves, frankly,” township administrator Anthony Mercantante said last week.
Area residents objected but officials conceded it was the best deal in the offing with the township planning board signing off on the project.
For its affordable housing component, the settlement requires the developers to, instead of designating actual buildings for its use, they would contribute a percentage of the fair market value of the units upon completion, which would be used for the township’s affordable housing trust fund, remembered Mercantante.
“The township was fortunate, I think to settle,” Mercantante said last week. “I think it’s better than what had been proposed by the landowners originally.”
Mercantante acknowledged there was and remains concern over the project and “I suppose everyone would have liked to see the golf course stay a golf course,” he said. “But that’s just not in the cards.”
Golf courses, Gaffney observed are, “a tough part of the economy. The golf business is shrinking,” and the site has been sitting for an extended period, becoming “overgrown and unsightly.”
Toll Brothers eventually purchased the property and the township’s development approval. “We’re a company that likes to buy communities that are in fabulous markets,” and considers Middletown one of those desirable areas, Gaffney said.
The overall project will likely take between seven and 10 years to complete, “depending on sales pace and economy; a wide variety of variables will affect that,” Gaffney said. And homeowners could begin moving in in fall 2015.
