The 18-hole, par-71 Berkshire Valley Golf Course in Jefferson Township, N.J. opened to the public in May. The course is 6,800 yards long and was built on about 600 acres of land. The maintenance building opened in June, and the clubhouse and restaurant are expected to be open in October. Berkshire Valley is the largest public golf course in Morris County and is the first to open in the county since 1985.
More than 10 years ago, Morris County Department of Parks and Recreation started to investigate the site as a location for a new golf course. It hired The RBA Group, and RBA prepared a comprehensive development package from site feasibility to construction inspection for an 18-hole championship golf and practice facility on 400 acres in northern New Jersey. RBA evaluated all of the environmental constraints, including wetlands, buffers, floodplains, soils, vegetation, endangered species, water quality, groundwater, zoning and utilities. Based on these constraints, several permittable golf layouts were prepared. Traffic studies also were prepared to obtain access permits from the County and Jefferson Township.
The permit approvals obtained for the project included Morris County SCD Certification, NJDEP Individual Wetlands Permit, NJDEP Major Stream Encroachment Permit, NJDEP Water Allocation Permit, NJDEP Treatment Works Approval, U.S. Fish/Wildlife and EPA Endangered Species Concurrence, and NJ State Historic Preservation Office approval.
Final design plans and construction documents then were prepared for the 18-hole layout and a clubhouse, maintenance facility, halfway house, pump house and rain shelter.
The site constraints of this former sand and gravel operation necessitated the design of a 2,000-foot entrance roadway with a 10-foot concrete block retaining wall. The horizontal and vertical separation of the various site buildings required special coordination with PSE&G to bring electric to the site from two separate off-site locations, while we also coordinated with AT&T to relocate a regional fiber-optic line that traversed the site.
Mark Jaretsky is the course superintendent, and Renee Klose-Maffei is the course’s lead professional.