Member Story: Jed Dukett of Timberjaxx Pass

Some vacationing families may become connoisseurs of local beaches, ice cream stands or roadside attractions.

Jed Dukett and his family find themselves drawn to miniature golf courses. When they’re on holiday, they find themselves playing three or four times over the course of the week.

So when the professional chemist began thinking about a second act after retiring from science in 2020, he started thinking: Why not putt-putt? “You do something you enjoy doing, it’s not really work,” says Dukett, a lifelong Tupper Lake resident.

But it takes more to build a miniature golf course than a windmill and a clown nose. First, you need to design the course. (Did you know there are professional mini-golf course designers?) Then, you need to buy the land. Then, you need to clear the lot and build the course. All that requires a serious investment: In the case of Dukett and his wife, Juli, they planned on spending a half-million dollars to open Timberjaxx Pass, an 18-hole course on the site of an abandoned gas station on Route 3.

And while New York State awarded him a $199,000 grant as part of its $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative in Tupper Lake, Dukett quickly learned that banks weren’t exactly falling over themselves to offer big commercial loans to untested businesses.

“That’s where the credit union came in,” he said.

Dukett had been a member of Adirondack Regional FCU since he was a teenager. His mother worked at the Sunmount Developmental Center in Tupper, where the credit union had a branch, and she made sure he had a checking account there. He’s had it ever since. 

“They’ve always been great,” Dukett said, recalling a long list of credit union staffers he’s worked with past and present. When it came time to find financing for his retirement job a few years ago, though, he admits that he didn’t think of the credit union first for business financing.

After shopping around, though, he learned that not only could Adirondack Regional handle all his needs, but we could do it with less red tape than competing financial institutions.

“There were fewer hurdles at the credit union,” Dukett said. “They were able to release funding based on our conversations about the business, rather than completing other tasks or paperwork.”

It means a lot to him and his wife that the credit union put that kind of trust in him. And it feels even better, he says, knowing that a local institution was behind the business loan that helped Timberjaxx Pass get off the ground. When they built their course, they turned to friends and family for help, but also local contractors whenever possible — after all, pouring concrete for a 9-foot waterfall isn’t a job for amateurs. 

We’re as confident as Dukett in what his project can do for Tupper Lake. Do you have a dream to build a business in your community? Talk to a credit union representative to see how we can help bring it to life. 

Timberjaxx Pass is open 7 days a week and is located at 86 Demars Blvd. in Tupper Lake, New York