ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Well Preserved Golfers and environmentalists unite at The Preserve at Oak Meadows The Preserve at Oak Meadows 900 N. Wood Dale Rd. Addison, Illinois 60101 630-595-0071 DuPageGolf.com BY BARRY CRONIN T ake a look at some of those old black-and-white YouTube videos of Ben Hogan, then imagine the “Hawk” swinging his swing in person at erstwhile Elmhurst Country Club, where he won the 1941 Chicago Open nearly eight decades ago. the $16.8 million renovation took place between 2015 and 2017. “We returned Oak Meadows to be part of a public trust,” said Ed Stevenson, who coordinated the proj-ect as the director of golf for the FPDDC and cur-rently is executive director of the FPDDC. “We’ve really tried to return this property to the community for golfers and non-golfers alike.” Ron Whitten, golf course architecture critic for Golf Digest magazine, praised the project. “The creative manner in which [the design] addresses floods and storm water makes [The Pre-serve at Oak Meadows] the winner of our Green Star environmental award for 2017,” Whitten said. Stevenson was a key reason for comity between “Golf” and the environmental community, according to Stephen McCracken, director of the DuPage River Salt Creek Workgroup, for the Naperville-based Conservation Foundation. “We had approached the FPDDC about two years Prior to the innovative renovation at The Preserve, the Salt Creek tributary long proved to be an issue, as heavy rains often caused its banks to overflow. “The Wee Ice Mon,” of course, is but a distant memory. So are most things in formerly rural DuPage County, including then-private Elmhurst C.C. In 1985, the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County (FPDDC) bought it, renamed it Oak Meadows Golf Course and opened it to the public. As suburban-ization intensified, flood waters inundated the fair-ways, forcing the course to close for weeks at a time year after year – and earn the nickname “Soaked Meadows” along the way. The “big bang” moment came in 2009, when light-ning struck the club’s 45,000-square-foot brown brick Tudor-style clubhouse, burning it down to the ground and forcing the Forest Preserve to figure out what to do next. Now, 11 years later, the reimagination of The Pre-serve at Oak Meadows is regarded as the perfect mar-riage of golf and environmental interests, two groups that often would be seen as strange bedfellows. This will be the course’s third full year of operation since 46 | CHICAGO DISTRICT GOLFER | APRIL 2020 CHARLES CHERNEY
Chicago District Golfer April 2020: Page 46
