Yorktown to Discuss Potential Use of Shallow Creek Golf
The Yorktown Town Board will consider whether the former Shallow Creek Par 3 Golf Course on Route 6 in Shrub Oak should be become a multipurpose recreational facility at the work session to be held on August 9.
Shallow Creek closed and was donated to the town in 2007. It has since remained vacant.
The establishment of a golf learning and family fun center is one of two proposals for the 12-acre site that were submitted in response to a request for proposals issued late last year.
In July, Yorktown Supervisor Susan Siegel attended a presentation of the two proposals to the recreation commission. The Golf Learning and Family Fun Center, proposed by Kevin Chin, who currently operates a golf instruction business at the Lake Isle Country Club in Eastchester, would include a golf learning program, driving range and practice hole, a high-end miniature golf course, laser tag, a Frisbee golf course, and a fitness studio offering yoga and other fitness activities in the existing building which would also offer snacks. The Center would operate year round.
The second proposal, from Rocco Cambareri of the Metropolitan Athletic Corporation, was to re-establish a restaurant in the existing building and rehabilitate the previous golf course so that it could function once again as a 9-hole, par 3 golf course.
When the town took the golf course off of the tax rolls they classified it as recreational space.
In a memo to the town board, Jennifer Fava, superintendent of parks and recreation department, wrote that Chin’s proposal “offers the Town the best option for the site while offering the widest range of possibilities to best serve the community.” She went on to say that the recreation commission recommends that the town board accept the proposal and authorize her department to work with Chin and his team to negotiate the terms of an agreement.
“The Family Fun Center certainly sounds like it has the potential for being a major new recreational asset to the Town,” Siegel said. “Right now, Shallow Creek is not being used and it continues to cost the town money to even minimally maintain the grounds. The building is also in need of repair and will continue to deteriorate if nothing is done to renovate it. We shouldn’t let the site become another Holland Sporting Club. The town needs to work with a private developer to transform the site into a recreational and financial asset.”
With the town board’s approval, the town would lease the property to Chin for a fixed period of time and he would assume the responsibility for making the necessary improvements to the site.
Siegel said that she does not anticipate asking the town board to spend town funds to renovate the site.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.