Meadowlands development ready to tee off

Landfills don't conjure up visions of swirling sea gulls, rotting garbage and leaking methane to Bill Gauger. He sees fairways and par 5s.

The former Tampa developer last week took a big step toward making his dream a reality in a very prominent spot. The president of EnCap Golf Holdings sealed a deal to turn 1,235 acres of abandoned landfills and wetlands in the shadow of Manhattan into a $1-billion golf resort.

The New Jersey Meadowlands Commission approved Gauger's plan to dredge 4-million cubic yards of New York Harbor bottom and spread it over three landfills near Giants Stadium that were closed in 1979. EnCap plans to start digging at the site this summer.

Gauger moved EnCap's offices out of downtown Tampa last year to the Raleigh, N.C., headquarters of its parent, Cherokee Investment Partners, a real estate investment trust that raises money to recycle polluted property.

The Meadowlands landfills would be developed as hotel, office and residential buildings over a decade. The first four years will be spent sealing the buried garbage under 5 more feet of dirt in a $300-million "remediation project." Small steam generators will produce electricity from escaping methane.

The state also plans to build a rapid transit-Amtrak station a mile away over other nearby landfills. Mills Corp., the owner of Sawgrass Mills near Fort Lauderdale that once tried to build a mall on the Florida State Fairgrounds near Tampa, is negotiating to develop an outlet mall on another nearby Meadowlands landfill.

Negotiations over EnCap's deal were held up by political controversy. Two members of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey resigned because their companies were to be engineers or contractors in the Encap project.

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