A mini golf course is proposed
for a derelict Barrington site.

A miniature golf course is proposed for a Gloucester Pike property in Barrington, on the site of a building that has been sitting derelict. It would go immediately next to Royal Fitness, and the two share the same ownership team. The borough lists the application as Royal Green Miniature Golf, number 26-012, at 60 E. Gloucester Pike, block 13 lot 1.08, and it went on the Barrington Planning/Zoning Board's agenda for the Aug. 24 meeting, for votes on a use variance and on preliminary and final site plan approval.

The plans call for demolishing the roughly 10,000 square foot single-story building at the front of the property. Most residents know it as the former Kids Castle daycare, and before that it housed a Tupperware distributor; it was originally built as the Merrill Engineering hangars, part of the long-gone Barrington Airport, with a since-demolished rear section wide enough to move airplanes through. Today it has large holes in the roof and missing portions of the rear facade, and the parking lot has gone years without maintenance. A second building on the property came down about five years ago.

Essentially the entire 63,000 square foot property would be redeveloped. The course would sit toward the front where the building stands now, with parking behind it, appearing on the plans as about 35 spaces, and the far rear given over to stormwater management. The driveway would move to run between the new course and the Royal Fitness building next door. The only structure proposed is a small clubhouse where customers pay for rounds and buy concessions, with a paver area around it. The plans on file do not name a course theme or show individual hole designs.

For an owner nearby, the useful part is what the application asked for. A use variance is what an applicant seeks when the use itself is not permitted in that zone, so the board is asked to approve the golf course as a use, not only the layout of the site. Nothing is settled until the board adopts a resolution, and the minutes and the resolution for the Aug. 24 meeting are not posted yet. For a homeowner the condition of the property matters more than the golf: a building open to the weather, on a road with a fitness club and a Dollar Tree, is a listing detail a buyer's agent raises, and a cleared site changes that conversation whether or not this applicant is the one who clears it.