Long-delayed Mercer Oaks East sets summer opening

Drought damage has set back much-anticipated West Windsor course.

By: Edmund Karam
   Mercer County golfers eagerly anticipating the opening of Mercer Oaks East in West Windsor should prepare to wait yet another season. The newly constructed Scottish-links course, which was scheduled to open last year, will not be ready for play until late summer — at the earliest — due to drought-damaged tee boxes, fairways and greens. Frank Ragazzo, executive director of the Mercer County Park Commission, the agency that oversees the management of all four of the county’s golf courses, was reluctant to give a firm date on the new course’s grand opening. "We certainly don’t want to open the course before it’s ready and risk doing further damage," he said, "but I’d expect it to be ready for play by late summer of this year."
   Scheduled to open for play last summer, Mercer Oaks East was hamstrung by a combination of drought and state Department of Environmental Protection and Delaware River Basin Commission regulations. Last summer, the DEP issued two violation notices to the county: one for pumping water from the Assunpink Creek when the creek was below mandated levels, a second for pumping water from a pond adjacent to the third hole on the original Mercer Oaks course without a permit. Although golfers prone to an occasional hook while playing the third hole on the old course were cheered to find their ball resting in a dry pond bed last summer, the DEP was not, and threatened to fine the county.
   Subsequently, no fine was levied — but there is a stroke and distance penalty for golfers who plop their Titleist on the pond’s dry and cracked mud bed.According to John O’Donovan, the starter, approximately 60 percent of Mercer Oaks East’s fairways were ruined by the drought, but Mr. Ragazzo says the damage is less severe, but because of the heavy snow cover this past winter, damage to the fairways and greens was difficult to assess and treat.
   Recovery costs for the new course will come out of revenue from the other county courses, said Mr. Ragazzo. "If you lose a weekend at one of our courses, you could lose easily $20,000 in revenue," he says. "You have to look at the big picture. Some years our revenue exceeded our expectation by a couple hundred thousand dollars. You take the good with the bad. We’ve had a couple great summers these past years. There’s always enough money to pay debt service."
   Like the first Mercer Oaks course, Mercer Oaks East is paid from bonds issued by the Mercer County Improvement Authority — not tax-payer money. The new course was built on a $3.2-million construction bid by Ault, Clarke and Associates, a design firm out of Maryland that also designed the original course. "Other more famous design firms such as Gary Players’ and Arnold Palmers’ bid on the project, but were about five times more expensive," according to Mr. Ragazzo. "Although price was not the overriding consideration, we chose Ault, Clarke and Associates because we were pleased with their design and took into consideration the fact that we were building a public course, not a private one."
   The new course was built to help reduce the waiting time for eight thousand Mercer County golfers who were not having much fun waiting 2 hours to play a 5 ½-hour round. "Once the new course opens, it will definitely reduce the difficulty of scheduling a tee time on the weekends at any of the county’s courses and reduce the time it takes to play a round," Mr. Ragazzo stated. "Without doing any marketing or scientific research, the park could probably justify building a fifth course. There is no question that Mercer County is growing at a rate to support another course."
   Similar to Mercer Oaks’ inaugural rounds in 1991, the new course would be open for limited play on Friday and the weekends. Golf carts would be allowed on cart paths only, and prices will be about $3 to $4 above the fees for Mercer Oaks (see golf listings, page 11).
   As for the future likelihood of more watering woes, Mercer Oaks East has more than just cool, wet spring weather working in its favor. Mr. Ragazzo said that he is "pleased with our relationship with the state-run Department of Environmental Protection and the Delaware River Basin Commission. We have had good communication with them and have complied with their requests to submit contingency plans for future water shortages."