Princeton University has agreed to wait until 2032 at the earliest before it can develop the university-owned Springdale golf course, a delay Nassau Hall agreed to with the private operator of the course.
The licensing agreement Princeton has with the Springdale Golf Club runs through 2036, but there is an early termination clause that lets Nassau Hall out of the deal. Based on the old terms, Princeton had the ability, starting in 2023, to notify the club it would opt out early, provide three years notice, and take control of the land starting in January 2027.
But the two sides amended the agreement last week so those dates have been pushed back five years, university Vice President and Secretary Robert K. Durkee said on July 2. Now, he said, the university has the option of notifying the club in 2028 that it intends to opt out and then regain control of the land in January 2032.
“The club is very pleased with this outcome,” Kevin Tylus, president of the club’s Board of Governors, said on July 2. “We’ve been in discussions with the university for several months about this.”
Durkee said representatives of the club approached the university in the spring about amending the deal, a request the university was amenable to.
“Literally the only thing that needed to be changed in the agreement were the dates,” Durkee said.
Princeton has said it envisions using the Springdale lands for educational purposes, but not anytime soon.
“I don’t think there’s any way to predict when,” Durkee said, “but we were very comfortable in these discussions with a judgment that it would certainly not be before 2032.”
The golf course is used by the university’s men’s and women’s golf teams, both of which eventually would need to find a new home when and if Springdale is developed. Durkee said the university has not begun to think that far ahead.
“We obviously don’t have to answer that question now for a while, but at some point if we were to develop those lands for other educational purposes, we would need to decide how to support the golf teams,” he said. “That’s a decision that will need to be made at some point, but it’s not one we need to make right now.”
The golf club has been growing in 2018, with membership increasing by 10 percent since the end of last year.
“Springdale is, fortunately, going through a membership increase right now,” Tylus said of a club up to 410 members. “This messaging allays fears that prospective new members and existing members would have with the previous shorter notification period.”
In 2020, the golf club will celebrate its 125th anniversary.
“I think the longer they can assure their current members the golf course will remain a golf course, the better it is for them,” Durkee said. “Their ability to attract members is helped if they can say, as they now can, that the club will remain in place at least through Jan. 1, 2032.”