City Drives Forward on Plans For New Golf Course in Bronx

The city is reviving plans to build a world-class public golf course at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx, entering into negotiations with a developer, Sanford Golf Design, to complete the long-troubled project.

The parks department in 2000 awarded a $22 million contract to Ferry Point Partners LLC to create an 18-hole course at the park, a former landfill, but the plan went out of bounds in 2006 after the city had poured more than $14.8 million into the project with little to show for six years of work.

Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday in a statement that the choice of Sanford moves the city closer to "eventually creating another world-class amenity for New Yorkers and visitors to enjoy."

City Comptroller William Thompson Jr., a likely candidate for mayor in 2009, also hailed the new deal as a positive step. Last year, Mr. Thompson criticized the city's handling of the deal after an audit by his office found that the parks department had overpaid the site's developer by millions of dollars for inadequate work. In a statement yesterday, Mr. Thompson said that while he had "in the past expressed concerns about delays," he shared the mayor's goal of turning the former landfill into a new public course.