Rebranded and refreshed, Riverhead’s par-3 Sandy Pond Golf Course to reopen under new ownership March 1

Sandy Pond Golf Course, which is closed for renovation this winter, will open in March under new ownership.

The nine-hole, par-3 course on Roanoke Avenue, a Riverhead favorite for more than half a century, has been purchased by Brian Stark and Earl Truland, who are already working on upgrades and plan to add a mini-golf course and a new clubhouse on the 18-acre site.

Stark grew up near the par-3 course and worked there as a youth. He recalled walking from his backyard through the woods to work at Sandy Pond and has fond memories of the place.

“I want to kind of replicate the golf course I grew up on because I think it was better back then,” Stark said in a phone interview today.

Stark, a local businessman who in the early 1990s was one of the original owners of Long Island National Golf Course in Riverhead, said par-3 courses make the sport more accessible to the general public by breaking down three barriers to the game: its difficulty , the time it takes to play, and the expense of playing.

“Those are the three negative variables of golf and Sandy Pond is none of those things,” Stark said. “You can play without having a driver. You can play with a 7, 8 or 9 iron. The holes are shorter, so it’s not as difficult. You can play in an hour and 15 minutes, so it doesn’t take all day. And you’re paying, $15 or $17 to play — not the $100” charged by most standard courses, Stark said.

He said he hopes to “bring in guys who are used to playing high-end courses and give them a quality course with some challenges without alienating the people who made it Sandy Pond. That’s kind of my mission,” he said. There’s a market for the kind of course, “where you can kind of have both,” he said. “You can have a high-end quality course, but you still appeal to the average hacker who hits a lot of ground balls and doesn’t want to get beat up.”

Sandy Pond will reopen March 1 rebranded as Sandy Pond Links. Stark and Truland have “brushed up the clubhouse” with a fresh coat of paint and new furniture. They’ve also worked on conditioning the course, expanding the greens to their original size and cleaning up the contours of the course — and the pond.

Stark said a new clubhouse and the mini-golf course are planned for the north side of the site. There will be a new parking lot to go along with the new clubhouse, which will have a golf simulator, Stark said. It will have a patio and offer beer, soda, and ice cream for sale. Patrons will be able to exit the clubhouse to either the nine-hole course or the mini-golf facility.

The clubhouse will be at a high point on the property and the entire course will be visible, he said.

“For years, people didn’t even know the golf course was there because the old buildings were there,” Stark said, referring to storage buildings used by local contractors. The old buildings have already been demolished, opening the golf course to view from the road.

Stark said he hopes to get the parking lot and the mini-golf done by the end of the year, followed by the new clubhouse and storage buildings in the second phase.

He said he filed a site plan application with the town last week. There have been pre-submission conferences with town officials, who are “very amenable to it,” Stark said.

“It’s kind of a fun thing for me,” he said. “I grew up in the town. I grew up next door to it. I’m going to look at it long term,” he said.

The golf course was originally part of a 36-acre site where the Buckholz family operated Riverhead Cement Block for many years. The property was subdivided in 2016 to create two roughly equal parcels. Terry Contracting bought the northern parcel and operates that site.

Stark said his new company is in contract to buy the golf course property and will be leasing it from the estate of the recently deceased Bryce Buckholz until his estate can transfer title.

“It’ll be a great spot,” Stark said. “Sandy Pond is a Riverhead thing that we can hopefully keep going.”