A planned major redevelopment of the 50-year-old Toftrees Golf Resort is inching closer to becoming a reality.
Patton Township’s Board of Supervisors last week received an overview of a sketch plan submission for the project, which was first made public in August. Sketch plans are voluntary and are intended to garner feedback before a developer submits formal land development plans.
Tony Fruchtl, of project engineer PennTerra, presented the sketch plan at the May 10 meeting on behalf of the resort’s owner, State College Friends, LLC. He said he expects a land development plan will be submitted “in a month or two.”
Construction is tentatively expected to begin, pending approvals, in the late fall, immediately following Penn State football’s final home game, Fruchtl said. The goal is to open the new facility in the summer of 2025.
The golf course, which will not be altered, will continue to operate during construction with a temporary sales trailer on site.
The project will be a “complete demolition and rebuild of the existing facility,” Fruchtl said.
Plans call for a conference center, expanded meeting space, a 4,000-square-foot luxury spa, a public restaurant, a private dining room, courtyards and lawns, a new clubhouse and pro shop and 154 hotel rooms — 52 more than the current hotel. Expanded space and seating is included for the resort’s current public restaurant, The Field Burger & Tap, though Fruchtl said he did not know what it would be named in the new resort.
An outdoor amenity area will have a pool, tennis court and pickleball courts.
Once completed, the new five-story hotel is expected to join Marriott’s Autograph Collection of independently operated luxury hotels.
“It will be an upscale kind of place,” Fruchtl said, echoing State College Friends managing member Bob Poole’s previous remarks to the board that the plan is for “a really high-end resort.”
The planned hotel is “more compact” than the current building, Fruchtl said. Before supervisors earlier this year approved a zoning change increase to increase the maximum building height from 50 feet to 75 feet on the resort property, Poole explained that expanding upward instead of outward would allow for a more efficient experience for guests and staff, enable better stormwater management and increase green space to be used for purpose-specific guest lawns.
The expanded lawns will help to attract events such as weddings and expositions, Fruchtl said.
General access to the renovated property will be from a new road off Toftrees Avenue west of the current access point at Country Club Lane. The new road, which will be across the street from the entrance to Turtle Creek apartments, will remedy visibility issues experienced by drivers using Country Club Lane, which will remain only as a service driveway.
A pending traffic impact study is expected to call for a left turn lane but not a traffic signal, Fruchtl said. He added that the total number of parking spaces on the site is still under consideration.
The project also will include 50 residential units to be constructed within the 140,000-square-foot resort property. No residential units currently exist on the property, but Poole previously told the board the new homes would help to reduce the overall cost of the redevelopment project. Supervisors in January approved increasing the number of permitted residential units in the Toftrees Planned Community — which contains a number of housing developments —from 4,690 to 4,740 to accommodate the project.
Resort owners have estimated the cost of the overall expansion and upgrade project at $50 million. According to information presented to the township last year, it is projected create an additional 137 permanent full-time jobs representing $7.3 million in annual employee wage compensation, as well as 399 temporary construction jobs generating $26.4 million in labor income.
The project received a $2.5 million state grant from Pennsylvania’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program to support selected demolition, infrastructure improvements, utilities, landscaping, lighting and other site work.
