Writing from Chicago
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
A coalition has been formed to save Calumet Country Club in Hazel Crest as green space and as a golf course, preventing it from industrial development.
The group, Calumet Collaborative, is comprised of disparate parties interested in saving both the golf course, a century-old design of famed architect Donald Ross, and the acreage itself. They banded together in recent days in response to the decision of W&E Ventures, the current property owner, to close the golf course permanently and to seek permission from Hazel Crest to get it rezoned for industrial use to sell it to Ryan Industries.
Calumet Country Club’s board sold the property for $3.1 million in 2020. Since then, it’s been kept open as a public course while the new owners fought first with the village of Homewood, then Hazel Crest, over development of the property into an industrial park. Residents of both communities, as well as adjacent East Hazel Crest, have largely been opposed to the development, which would increase truck traffic in an area that, while adjacent to the Tri-State Tollway, is largely two-lane roads.
The Calumet Collaborative includes backing from the Chicago District Golf Association, South Suburbs for Greenspace, the Donald Ross Society, and a number of individuals, including Michael Grandinetti, who is both a former president of the CDGA and Calumet Country Club, as well as a course architect, a real estate advisor, a course constructor and open-space advocates. It notified Hazel Crest of its desire to keep Calumet as green space, and ideally as a golf course, in a proposal to deliver a feasibility study to prove its value submitted to the village earlier today.
“Successful implementation of our proposal to restore and expand Calumet will deliver excellent open space, recreational, economic development, and quality of life benefits to Hazel Crest and the surrounding communities,” wrote Donald Ross Society president Vaughn Halyard in the proposal’s introduction.
Wrote South Suburbs for Greenspace director Liz Vermacky in a letter of support, “(T)he highest and best use for The Calumet Country Club is to preserve it as an invaluable green space for the community and an historic course for golfers and residents in Hazel Crest and surrounding communities to enjoy.
“The Southland of Chicago has an overabundance of industrial and warehouse facilities and a dearth of greenspace. The greenspace that comprises the Calumet Country Club is home to old-growth trees as well as many species of native animals and plants. In a corner of Chicagoland with poor air quality, the Calumet Country Club is a breath of fresh air.”
– Tim Cronin
Full disclosure – Cronin, wearing his golf historian hat, is acting as an advisor to this project and is on its board.