Stockton College Considers Ponderlodge for Environmental Center

VILLAS — Richard Stockton College is considering using the former Ponderlodge Golf Course as an environ-mental education center.
Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-1st) spoke to residents at Monday’s Lower Township Council meeting. He called Ponderlodge a unique and beautiful area but one that also had problems and was close to being de-molished. Van Van Drew said last week he was contacted by the president of Stockton College and met twice with him.
He said the president of Stockton College and others “were very committed to doing something.” Van Drew said they would examine the lodge building and property to see if it could be used for a satellite campus.
He said it would be a very small campus but would be wonderful for Lower Township, creating local jobs and putting the “township on the map.” Classes would be held and possibly a small library created, said Van Drew.
The determination if Stockton College will proceed with the project will be made within one month.
The project would use no money from taxpayers or the township. The college may be able to use economic stimulus money from the federal government and has funding sources such as a foundation, said Van Drew.
He called Ponderlodge a real opportunity to have a satellite campus of a four-year college. Van Drew said he believed there was a 50/50 chance of the project happening, based not on financial resources, but whether the facility’s current condition will allow restoration to an educational center.
He said some of the $1 million of state Department of Environmental Protection funding earmarked to demolish the facility could be used for restoration.
“If we can’t do something in a very short period of time to insure that it is cleaned up, that it is safe, that it is secure and that somebody is watching it and maintaining it, then that property will have to be demolished,” said Van Drew.
Activist Barbara Skinner has been contacting organizations and colleges for two and a half years hoping to find a reuse for the 250 acre property to prevent a planned demolition of the lodge building by DEP which owns the site.
Skinner said she delivered the blueprints from the original construction of Ponderlodge to the college April 4. Skinner said she met with Drew on April 2 and gave him petitions with signatures supporting the project. As a state college, the state could transfer part of the property to Stockton or create a management agreement, said Skinner.
A management agreement was created with the state Division of Fish and Wildlife for the Natural Resource Education Foundation of New Jersey in Waretown for 192-acre parcel formerly owned by the Lighthouse Camp, said Skinner. The group used a portion of DEP funding first earmarked for demolition on the property as an endowment.
DEP spokesperson Darlene Yuhas described the project as being “in the conversation phase at this point.”
“At this point it is not too late to consider a project such as that because we have not yet gone out to bid for demolition of those structures, so there is time to talk,” she said.
Yuhas said the stumbling block for previous proposals for reuse of Ponderlodge was dollars.
“We certainly are supportive of the goal there,” she said.
The current condition of structures on the property pose a public safety concern, said Yuhas.