The public golf course that saved a town - High Bridge, New Jersey

Golf Digest, May, 1999 by Frank Hannigan

What you can learn from the big turnaround of a small New Jersey borough's fortunes

Fifty years ago, small-town American ideals were exemplified in Frank Capra's Christmas-movie tearjerker "It's a Wonderful Life." The bad guy was the town's leading capitalist -- the sneering banker played by Lionel Barrymore, who wanted to swallow Bedford Falls whole. The good guy was Jimmy Stewart, head of a small building-and-loan society that barely got along lending money for local development -- wholesome stuff like houses and small businesses.

Today the big bank's role has flipped. It lends money at favorable rates to small towns so the towns can buy up big hunks of land to fend off developers and their attendant evils: little kids. The land is then converted to golf courses and everybody lives happily ever after.

At least that's the scenario for High Bridge, N.J., a borough of two square miles, population 4,000, located 50 miles west of New York City.

High Bridge goes back to pre-revolutionary times. For much of its history, it was a one-company town -- the company being the Taylor- Wharton firm that made steel and armaments like shells ("we gave George Washington his cannon balls'') right up to the Vietnam War. When Taylor-Wharton (which, at its peak, employed 2,500 people) shut down, High Bridge began to look decrepit.

Today it has turned around thanks to a surprising source: golf. Five years ago, there was only one sizable undeveloped parcel in the borough -- an unused farm of 145 acres. Big-time New Jersey builders lusted after the property, envisioning an upscale town-house development with 300 to 600 units. The town countered by buying the farm for itself for $1.9 million. The farm has become a golf course that will open in June at virtually no cost to the local taxpayers.

The real threat to High Bridge was not the houses themselves, but the kids they would spill into the school system. The High Bridge school (K through 8) is already at capacity with 700 learners. Four hundred new kids -- a sure thing in a development of 300 units -- would have necessitated a school building project. Estimated cost: $15 million.

A typical High Bridge homeowner, with a house valued at, say, $175,000, is already squeezed by $5,000 a year in property taxes. That number would vault to about $8,000 a year if a new school were required.

Mayor Al Schweikert says his borough could not survive that kind of hit -- that it would mean "the death of the town." High Bridge might have to fold and appeal for a merger with a neighbor -- bigger Clinton Township to its southwest, or rusty old Glen Gardner to its northwest. (Treasury agents were raiding the hills of Glen Gardner for whisky stills as late as the 1970s.) In other words, High Bridge would, in the parlance of TV sports-talk, no longer "control its own destiny."

As he pondered a way to keep the open space and fend off a new school, Schweikert's agile mind turned toward golf, although he is no more than an occasional player who "breaks 100." As was so in Jimmy Stewart's day, small-town mayors continue to be political hobbyists. Al Schweikert, 37, who has a doctorate in biochemistry, has a real job as a neuroscientist with a high-tech firm.

What the mayor knew was that there were no public courses in the vicinity. Indeed, when High Bridge Hills Golf Club opens, it will be the first public course in Hunterdon County, which has a population of 150,000. The county, predominantly a blue-collar farming outpost 50 years ago, is now upwardly mobile in socioeconomic terms because it is convenient to northern New Jersey's two big interstates -- Jersey I-78 and I-287.

Mayor Schweikert found a solid corps of volunteers in favor of the golf initiative. He formed a committee, which is headed by Felix Sorge, manager of administrative services of the U.S. Golf Association, whose headquarters are a hard half-hour drive east of High Bridge. Sorge availed himself of USGA hallway advice, especially from staff agronomists. Other stalwarts with a range of expensive talents on the golf committee include Veronica DeLario, financial officer for Johnson & Johnson, and Ron Reed, a former local pro who is now general manager of a substantial golf operation in Pennsylvania.

Projecting big profits

The financial projections for the new course are stunning (see chart below). They say that not only will there never be a deficit, but the golf course will be so profitable as to significantly reduce property taxes. The total High Bridge budget for 1998 was only $2.2 million. The golf course numbers project an annual average profit of $600,000 in the next 10 years, and then, after all the debt is repaid, annual profits in the range of (gulp) $2 million.

These numbers were possible only because of two financial transactions. The first was a flat-out grant to the town of $500,000 by the State of New Jersey that enabled High Bridge to pay its "soft costs" -- studies, fees, etc.

High Bridge then got a whopping $5.5 million loan from three local banks at only 3.55 percent interest and with the lovely provision that none of it need be paid back until three years after High Bridge got its hands on the money. It's called a Bond Anticipatory Note. It meant that, with acuity and luck, High Bridge could have its new course up and running before beginning to pay down the debt.