New Clubhouse Approved for Madison Golf Club

The Madison Golf Club will be doing something it's been talking about for 30 years, according to its vice president.

The private club, with its main entrance on Green Avenue, will be demolishing its current clubhouse and constructing a new one on a very similar spot, with a similar footprint.

The Planning Board approved the club's site plan, with minor conditions that the club was already offering from the start, at the board's meeting on Tuesday night. 

The clubhouse has been in poor shape and members have been talking about repairing or replacing it for years.

"If it was a band aide fix, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to pretty up and not address the structure," club vice president Joseph Dill said about the clubhouse he says is on brick mortar pylons and resting on beams that aren't ideal.

He also said that the showers do not currently work in the locker rooms.

The consistent testimony by Dill and the club's professionals, all called to speak by attorney David Scalera, was that the new clubhouse would be built only to replace what they believe is a dilapidated structure.

"We're not looking to expand in any aspects," Dill said. "We are looking to improve our facility. Our clubhouse is in disrepair"

Architect David Rosen, engineer Andrew Clarke, and landscape architect Jerry Sinagra Jr. also gave testimony. One after another they told the board that there would be very little change with the new construction.

"It is very close to the existing footprint," Clarke said. "It will shift to the south. One of the main reasons is to give it more breathing room from the first tee box. It will be shifted 30 feet to the south. In the sense of the whole site, it's more or less in the same location as the existing building."

However, there will be one vast improvement that is always an issue in Madison, and that is with storm water management. The new clubhouse construction will also see the golf club build a dry well system that will help keep storm water from flowing to other areas. All of the storm water from the building's roof would be captured by leader piping and filtered into the dry well system, which can handle 4 inches of water.

There weren't many questions or concerns by the board during or after the testimony. The only real complaints came from neighboring residents discussing issues that didn't tie into the construction of the clubhouse, such as what time the club runs its louder landscaping machines, and the volume of those machines.

Otherwise the board was fairly complimentary of the group, with Tom Johnson and others impressed with Sinagra's testimony, saying it was the most thought out landscaping testimony they had ever heard.

The board passed the site plan 6-0, with Mayor Mary-Anna Holden and Peter Flemming recusing themselves from the hearing because they are members of the club. John Forte was sick and absent from the meeting.

The conditions the board included in its approval of the clubhouse site plan were that the kitchen be for warming only, there would be no selling of alcohol, there would be only incidental use by outside groups, there would be no intensification of use by the cub, and that the temporary trailer be removed before issuing the Certificate of Occupancy.