It may not be Pebble Beach, but the tree-blanketed bluff along the Delaware River in West Deptford provides an impressive view.

RiverWinds Project

Encompasses 1,100 acres of a former dredge spoils site along the river. Theme: Jersey Shore boardwalk. Features: Two separate marinas with slips for 200 boats, 18 hole golf course and club house, 108,00 sq.-ft. community center, restaurants, retail shops, hotel/convention center, amphitheater, walking and equestrian trails, ice rink, tennis courts, fishing piers and open space to be preserved as widllife habitat. Cost: More than $100 million. Financing: State open space grants, a lawsuit settlementand tax payer backed bonds totaling $5.5 million was used to purchase the land. Another $31 million will be raised through long term bonds for the community center. The township also hopes to lease and sell parcels of land to repay bonds.

The mammoth skyscrapers of Philadelphia's skyline rise beyond a wide bend in the river. Jets lumber out of Philadelphia International Airport, banking over checkered petroleum tanks and the Kvaerner Shipyard.

Township officials are counting on this view. They expect visitors from across the region to take in this urban scenery while playing 18 holes of golf on the land, actually part of a peninsula formed decades ago from sediments dredged from the river.

A golf course is only part of the township's ambitious plan for a lavish, $100 million recreational complex that may signal a new era in the river's history, expanding the river's renaissance well beyond Philadelphia and the Camden Waterfront.

As proposed, the project will concentrate a host of recreational opportunities around an old manmade cove, including restaurants, retail shopping, a hotel/conference center, walking trails, tennis courts, fishing piers, boat launches and a community center. Construction is expected to begin early next year.

Now fringed by thick tangles of brush, reeds and billowing hardwood trees, the cove will be encircled by nature trails connecting a three-story golf clubhouse and small hotel aimed at the medium-size convention market.

"When this is done, it'll offer more amenities than Penn's Landing," West Deptford Administrator Gerald White boasted of his township's proposed RiverWinds marina complex.

West Deptford is not alone. Pennsauken has its own plan to turn an old tank farm owned by Texaco into ritzy residential, retail and recreational development.

And Florence officials are considering a number of possibilities … marina, commercial port and shops, to name a few … for the old Roebling Steel Mill, a Superfund cleanup site.

Meanwhile, officials from National Park to Logan in Gloucester County are considering their own riverfront projects. Sparked by West Deptford's plan, for instance, Paulsboro is considering redevelopment of the polluted British Petroleum terminal and adjacent defunct Dow Chemical plant site.

"It's too early to say (what kind) of development is realistic here," said John Burzichelli, mayor of the town. "The region can only absorb so many recreational projects.

"All we know is that we have a site that may be a short-term liability, but, in the long term, can give us a chance to shape the municipality." Except for the West Deptford plan, all municipal plans are preliminary. But it's a trend moving under its own momentum, with municipalities taking on the role of developers.

The new interest in riverfront development in Gloucester County has in large part been spurred by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' plan to dredge the Delaware River shipping channel beginning next year.

"I think dredging is a factor in the county and the towns accelerating their plans and looking for alternative uses of their waterfront besides as a dumping ground," said County Freeholder Robert J. Smith.

But no matter where the projects are planned, each of the municipalities is counting on people wanting to re-establish connections with the river.

West Deptford officials hired Wallace, Roberts and Todd to design the project, the same architectural firm that planned the entertainment complex at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The township has staked $5.5 million including nearly $2.8 million in taxpayer-backed bond money to buy 1,100 acres of riverfront land for the project.
Read on >>