The Woodbine Golf Course will close this year as planned, the Homer Glen mayor announced last week at a meeting, where renewal of a management agreement for the course was pulled from the agenda.
“I just see it as a bad idea,” Mayor Jim Daley said of continuing the golf course into 2015, particularly because alcohol would be consumed in a building that would be under construction.
Last winter, the village purchased the Woodbine property at 14240 W. 151st St. for $3.3 million. Officials plan to convert the golf course into a park and the clubhouse/banquet hall into a village hall by the spring of 2015. The village entered into an agreement with former owner Jim Ludwig for Ludwig to manage the property as a golf course and maintain it at his own expense until the end of 2014, village officials have said.
Trustees unanimously agreed to remove consideration of a 2015 management agreement for the Woodbine Golf Course from the meeting agenda. The motion to remove the item from the agenda was made by Trustee George Yukich, who has been a proponent of renewing the golf course agreement. He has said the agreement would save the village the cost of maintaining the property and give the village more time to complete renovations.
Yukich said he made the motion, because it was clear the mayor would be resistant to renewing the golf course agreement. He added that it was “sad” that an established Homer Glen family was “being forced out this way.”
Ludwig said last month that the Woodbine property under his ownership had come upon some hard times and that he had planned to work things out with the bank. The village, Ludwig said, skewed those plans when it expressed interest in purchasing the property.
More Top Picks Best Watch Straps For Men Leather
Woodbine Golf Course will close Dec. 31 when the village takes possession of it, Daley said last week.
Williams Architects of Itasca, selected by the village to remodel the Woodbine banquet hall/club house into a village hall, will seek input from trustees and village employees about the project. They will be surveyed this month and next, said Village Manager Cameron Davis.
In other news, Homer Glen, incorporated in 2001, displayed its new flag at the start of last week’s meeting. A presentation of colors with the official village flag was conducted by Boy Scout Troop 63. The flag, which trustees adopted in October 2013, consists of a white background with the village name and date of establishment in green, along with the village’s brown and green seal depicting a tree and the motto, “Community and Nature…in Harmony.”