JACKSON – Alan Nau, the owner and developer of Trophy Park, is still planning to proceed with his ambitious project on a 194-acre parcel at Route 537 and Hawkin Road in Jackson.
He said the application was ready to be presented to the Jackson Planning Board for final site plan approval until the coronavirus pandemic cancelled meetings for several months.
The board has approved a General Development Plan for the project. Specific aspects of the project will require additional hearings and site plan approval.
Trophy Park, an indoor and outdoor complex, is expected to include baseball and softball fields, batting cages, lacrosse, soccer and field hockey fields, practice fields, a 400,000-square-foot, two-story, 16-court indoor facility for basketball, volleyball, cheerleading and wrestling, and an outdoor stadium with 6,000 seats. The fields will be synthetic turf.
Trophy Park is also planned to include three restaurants, retail space, hotels and team suites. Athletes who attend camps and tournaments at Trophy Park will stay in the team suites. Their parents may stay in the hotels on the property.
In an interview this week, Nau provided an update on the Trophy Park project.
“We have gotten a lot of education from the groups that are coming to play here. We have added a professional arena football team (the Jersey Bearcats) and rugby. If you want to play rugby in the Olympics in the northeast, you will have to go through us. We are going to have all the needs here for qualification on the east coast, so we had to make some adjustments for that,” he said.
“We changed the indoor facility from 18 basketball courts to 16 basketball courts and added a full-size indoor soccer field because there was a big need for an indoor facility in the winter,” Nau said, explaining that the indoor facility would remain the same size as planned.
He said there has been interest expressed in volleyball leagues, volleyball tournaments and women’s field hockey.
“The hotels are going to be Wyndham hotels, one is going to be a La Quinta, the other is going to be Hawthorne Suites, each with 150 rooms, and we added a conference center to a hotel,” Nau said.
The application will eventually be heard by Planning Board as the developer seeks final approval for Trophy Park.
“We are not asking for any variances, but I did not want to spend a lot of money doing all of my engineering and architecture until I knew I could build it there. As you know, we had some opposition when we started, but when everybody saw what a great thing it was the opposition just seemed to disappear and go away,” Nau said.
Nau said he joined the local Chamber of Commerce in May 2019 and was elected to the chamber’s board in October.
“When I went to join the chamber, the members said, ‘What can we do for you?’ I said, ‘Nothing, I’m good.’ I want to see what I can do for the town because I am going to be here, I am going to be a neighbor,” Nau said.
He said he anticipates activities at Trophy Park starting in May 2021 – although the entire project may not be completed at that time – and said construction will commence once all approvals have been received.
Nau said the project will pay more than $2 million in taxes to Jackson and said, “$1.4 million of that will go to the schools and we are not putting one kid into a school, and when you come down to it, the over $2 million (Jackson) is getting in taxes, they are really not doing anything for us. We are going to have security here.”
The developer said he is planning to build and to donate a combined fire station, police station and emergency medical services facility to Jackson.
“Jackson will have a fire department, police station and EMS building on this side of town, which it does not have now,” Nau said.
He explained that the issue of fire and emergency services was raised during a Planning Board meeting when Trophy Park was being considered.
“The next day I took a ride. Driving from the (Trophy Park) site to the nearest firehouse took me 22 minutes in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day with no traffic. It was a half-hour to the police station.
“I was going to build my own little firehouse and have our own little fire department in-house … I talked to the fire commissioner, I was going to build a firehouse anyhow, so now I’ll build a firehouse and donate it …
“Then the police and first aid (personnel) came and said, ‘We would like to be there, too,’ so the building has gotten to the point where it is now a firehouse, a police station, state police, sheriff’s office, and first aid/EMS.
“That building (on Route 537 in front of Trophy Park) will have its own traffic light, a blinker light. It is good for the whole town; somebody who lives in this area and needs an ambulance, it is a half-hour before one gets here.
“This building will be five minutes away” from people on this side of Jackson, Nau said, adding that when he returns to seek final approval from the Planning Board he wants to have everything together, the right way, that night.