The Battle for Calumet Country Club

In Chicago’s South Suburbs — where steel, rail, and resilience have long defined the landscape — a different kind of battle is taking shape. A century-old golf course, woven into the city’s sporting and social history, now sits at the crossroads of preservation and progress.

The fight over Calumet Country Club isn’t just about zoning or development. It’s about identity — how we value open space, history, and the places where generations of Chicagoans have learned, competed, and connected.

Calumet has been part of the region’s golf DNA for over a hundred years. But as proposals emerge to replace its fairways with warehouses and truck bays, the conversation has grown larger than golf.

A Living Piece of Chicago Golf History

Few courses in Illinois can match Calumet’s pedigree. Founded in 1901, the club moved to its current Homewood/Hazel Crest site with the ambition to become one of the Midwest’s finest. The original design was intended for 27 holes by William Langford before the job shifted to Donald Ross, whose routing gave Calumet its distinctive balance of strategy and flow.

Calumet Country Club

Over the decades, some of the game’s greats walked these fairways. In 1945, Byron Nelson captured the Chicago Victory Open here — his seventh consecutive win in what became his record 11-tournament streak, one of the most untouchable records in golf history. Two decades earlier, Calumet hosted the 1924 Western Open, cementing its place among Chicago’s classic championship venues.

This isn’t just turf and trees. It’s the connective tissue between Chicago’s golden age of golf and today’s public-course renaissance. To lose Calumet would be to erase a chapter of golf history that helped define the city’s south side identity.

The Course Has Already Been Rebuilt Once

While the spirit of Donald Ross remains, much of the original layout was reshaped decades ago. In the 1950s, construction of a new highway sliced through the property, forcing the club to reconfigure several holes. Architects Larry Packard and Brent Wadsworth were brought in to preserve an 18-hole layout within new boundaries — a massive undertaking that saw entire holes shortened, rerouted, or eliminated.

Only about half of Ross’s original holes remain intact. Yet that evolution makes Calumet even more fascinating: it’s not a frozen relic, but a living record of Chicago’s changing landscape. Just as Cog Hill adapted Dubsdread for the modern era and Harborside International transformed landfill into world-class fairways, Calumet has proven it can evolve. The question is — will it get the chance again?

Déjà Vu: The Community Has Fought This Battle Before

If the headlines feel familiar, that’s because they are. This is the second major attempt to industrialize the site in just five years.

In 2021, developer Walt Brown proposed converting the property into a warehouse complex. When the Village of Homewood refused, the land was controversially disconnected and annexed into neighboring Hazel Crest — a move that left residents feeling betrayed and sidelined.

The citizen group South Suburbs for Greenspace (SSG) formed to fight back. They won that round, but the victory was temporary. Now, new developer Ryan Companies is back with a similar proposal. Different name. Same plan. Same fight for the future of green space in the Southland.

Born From Industry — and Now Threatened by It

There’s irony in Calumet’s story. The club was born from the same industrial wealth that now threatens to pave it over.

At the turn of the 20th century, Chicago’s industrial titans — steel magnates, railroad executives, and manufacturers — poured their prosperity into golf. They built havens like Calumet where executives could escape the grind of the mills and stockyards.

Fast-forward to today, and the economic forces have flipped. The new industrialists see logistics, not leisure, as the future of the land. Ryan Companies has argued that “the apparent best use for the site” is a distribution hub. What began as a green retreat for industry could end as a concrete monument to it — a perfect, if tragic, full circle.

The Ghosts of Greatness Still Linger

Years of uncertainty have taken their toll. Once-pristine bunkers have been reclaimed by grass. The fabled “pots bunker” on the 9th hole — a Ross signature — now sits overgrown. The 18th green has shrunk from neglect. The old pool and clubhouse structures have fallen silent.

And yet, the bones are still there. The contouring, the routing, the shot values — all whispering of an era when craftsmanship and creativity defined course design. Play Calumet today, and you can still sense Ross’s genius beneath the weeds.

It’s bittersweet — a glimpse of greatness fading before our eyes.

A Chicago Classic Worth Saving

The fate of Calumet Country Club isn’t just a local issue; it’s a referendum on how Chicago values its green spaces and golf heritage. The region has proven again and again that golf can coexist with growth — when vision and community align.

Calumet has been part of Chicago golf’s foundation for more than a century. Whether it survives may depend on whether we see its fairways as expendable acreage or as a living link to our shared history.

Because when a course like Calumet disappears, it’s not just land that’s lost — it’s a story, a legacy, and a little piece of who we are as Chicago golfers.