Property owner confirms work temporarily paused
By DAVID NOLAND
After more than a year of roaring bulldozers and clanking backhoes, Storm King Golf Course has gone suddenly silent. All work on the massive course renovation project stopped last weekend, and by Tuesday morning virtually all the heavy earth-moving equipment had been loaded up and trucked away.
“We were just told to come and get the machines,” said one of the truck drivers, pictured above. “Nobody told us why, or for how long.” Even the Port-A-Potties are gone.
Contacted by a Local reporter, Trey Owen, the property owner and head of the developer, the Hudson Valley Golf Foundation, confirmed that course work is on a “temporary pause as we work through some challenges.”
When pressed for more details on the nature of the challenges, as well as the estimated length of the pause, Owen did not respond.
The cost of the project was initially estimated at $8 million. The work now appears to be about two-thirds done. It’s not known how much money has been spent so far.
Before HVGF started work on the project, the Town required it to post a $958,978 Clearing & Grading Performance Bond. However, the Bond was recently reduced to $503,576 at HVGF’s request.
“We just wanted them to finish the project, the sooner the better,” says Supervisor Josh Wojehowski. It’s not known how HVGF spent the freed-up $455,402.
Until the Foundation works through its “challenges,” the upper third of the golf course will remain an unsightly moonscape of scraped and piled-up dirt. But, says Owen, this fall the West Point golf team would be practicing “some” on the completed lower section of the course.
