Glencoe's New Clubhouse Opened This Month, After Missing Two Deadlines in One Summer

On the evening of August 19, Glencoe's Village Board sat through its sixth change order in seventeen months for a building most residents had already stopped tracking as news and started tracking as a walk-by. Public Works Director Monica Sarna explained the latest $99,935 increase this way: crews doing exterior work had run into "a very wet summer, especially as far as the last month or so," and, buried somewhere they hadn't planned for, an old underground storage tank nobody had a record of. The board approved the change order unanimously. Village President Howard Roin, watching the project he'd championed inch toward its finish, kept it simple: "I'm looking forward to going there."

That meeting reset the target for substantial completion to September 11, itself a two-week slip from an August 14 date that had already replaced the original promise of "summer 2026." The Glencoe Golf Club's new clubhouse and restaurant, the one voters funded through a 2023 referendum, is open now. It just took longer to get there than anyone standing at that April 2023 ballot box would have guessed, and the reasons it took longer are the kind of detail you only get from sitting through board meetings, not from a ribbon-cutting press release.

A Deadline That Moved Twice

The old clubhouse had been on borrowed time for years. Discussions about replacing it date back to at least 2012, and by the time voters went to the polls in April 2023, the pro shop and dining building were both well past a century old. Voters approved a $15 million general obligation bond that spring to fund the replacement, with the Friends of the Glencoe Golf Club raising additional private money to round the total project cost closer to $18 million.

The demolition itself was almost theatrical in its speed. On May 8, 2025, Doetsch Contractors razed both the original clubhouse and an adjoining mansion structure on the site in a single day, clearing 100-year-old buildings that had outlived several rounds of proposed renovation. Construction was expected to take about a year, with officials repeatedly pointing to summer 2026 as the finish line.

Summer came and went before the doors opened. By the time the Village Board approved that sixth change order in August, the contract with W.B. Olson had grown to $15.7 million, roughly 5 percent above the original bond amount, spread across six separate adjustments since March 2025. The wet summer and the buried tank were the headline reasons for the final stretch, but they were also the kind of unglamorous, specific complications that don't show up in a rendering. They show up in a public works memo.

What Fills the Space Now

The clubhouse that finally opened this month is not a like-for-like replacement. Designed by FGM Architects in a Prairie School style, a nod to the North Shore's stock of Frank Lloyd Wright homes, the new building centers on an indoor dining room with a fireplace and an outdoor terrace that faces west, positioned for sunset views over the course. It houses Glencoe's first sports bar, a genuinely new category for the village, alongside two multi-sport simulators, a full-service golf shop, and a private event room.

Outside, the 126-acre site has added a regulation-sized croquet court, an event lawn, and a short game practice area, on top of the pollinator gardens and community garden plots the club already maintained as a certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary. The building itself was built toward LEED Silver standards, with geothermal HVAC and bird-safe glass throughout.

The food and beverage side went to Clubhouse Group, also known as Housepitality Group, which already runs Grill House and Cabo Grill in Northbrook and Backyard Grill in Highland Park. The vendor had actually been running interim food service at the club's temporary Tee Time Terrace since March, which is likely why the village board's discussion of the contract read less like a leap of faith and more like a formality. Starting in 2027, Clubhouse Group will pay the village a $45,000 annual base fee, a detail that turns what looks like a straightforward restaurant lease into a modest new revenue line for a facility taxpayers just spent years funding.

The club's own website now advertises the space as open year-round, and its calendar already reflects the shift back to normal programming. The Hard Course Chili Open, a longtime club event, is back after what the club itself calls a one-year hiatus, the clearest sign yet that the construction chapter is closed and the calendar chapter has resumed.

Downtown Filled In While the Course Was Quiet

While golfers waited on their clubhouse, downtown Glencoe's dinner options actually grew. RDK Sushi opened in the former Meg's Café space on Vernon Avenue, an expansion from the team behind the longtime local catering business An Apple A Day. A few doors down, Elyon opened as a new Mediterranean restaurant, drawing early attention for a chef's tasting menu alongside its regular dinner service.

Both arrived in a downtown that already had Guildhall, an American bistro that's been a fixture since 2013, and Valor, an American-French bistro known for a seasonal menu and a sidewalk patio. None of this happened because the golf club was closed. It's simply the coincidence of timing: a village whose only sports bar sat behind construction fencing for a year is now, in the same season, home to two additional kitchens it didn't have before.

The Fall Calendar Behind It

Glencoe's golf course sits next to the Chicago Botanic Garden, connected by the same stretch of the Green Bay Trail that runs through the village. The Garden's Night of 1,000 Jack-o'-Lanterns runs October 7 through October 25 this year, and Lightscape, the Garden's illuminated evening trail, comes back for its eighth season starting November 13, both events that draw residents out after dark in a way summer programming doesn't.

That's the actual shape of what changed here. A resident who spent last October walking a construction perimeter to reach the driving range can now finish nine holes, watch part of a game at the new sports bar, and still make it downtown for a table at Elyon or RDK Sushi before the Garden's lights start drawing crowds again. None of those pieces are new to Glencoe individually. What's new is that they're all open in the same six weeks, after more than a year where one of them very much was not.

If you've already been out to see the new terrace or tried one of the downtown newcomers, The Keki Cannon Team would love to hear what you thought. We're always paying attention to what's changing on the ground here, one clubhouse and one new kitchen at a time. Let's connect.