…but while the Evanston GC clubhouse still looks the same on the outside, a full interior renovation has started a brand new life for the 110 year-old club.
About a third of the 300 members of Evanston Golf Club (EGC) reside within the Chicago city limits. For these members—like the many other city residents before them who joined the club after its founding in 1898—a primary appeal has always been how EGC (which is actually not in Evanston, but in Skokie, a neighboring suburb) offers an easy respite from the city’s noise and crowds, through its marvelous Donald Ross golf course and other tranquil parts of its 225-acre property.
Several years into EGC’s second century of existence, however, a distinct “migration pattern” of the club’s city-based members was becoming hard to ignore. “They would show up in the late afternoon or on the weekend to tee it up,” notes Jon Talty, Chairman and CEO of Chicago-based OKW Architects. “But when they came back in off the course, if they stopped to even have just one drink before heading home, it was surprising. Even though they’d made the trip out, there was nothing [besides the golf course] to keep them there once they’d played.”
Even worse, EGC’s larger, suburban-based membership wasn’t exactly filling the clubhouse to capacity, either. After a series of less-than-successful attempts at piecemeal interior upgrades, Evanston’s Tudor-style, 90-year-old clubhouse building, while still handsome on the outside, had not only become outdated, but downright dysfunctional, inside. “The club was clearly in need of substantial renovation,” says Talty of the situation that existed by the mid-2000s.
Permanent Preservation
As often occurs when things deteriorate to such a degree, a groundswell grew among a sizeable portion of the membership for demolishing the 55,000-sq. ft. clubhouse and starting over. But like many clubs, EGC’s governing structure had a committee in place specifically to address its long-range needs. In this case, the committee was called Permanent Planning—and its members took the name to heart, as they championed the cause for finding a way to keep what had already stood in place for so long.
“It was a real battle,” recalls John Hammond, who became Chairman of the committee in 2004 and describes himself as “captain of the team” that favored renovation. Eventually, that side prevailed—in part because of their determination not to let so much of the club’s history be destroyed, but more persuasively, because it was shown that building a new clubhouse of the same size would be cost-prohibitive.
“If you built new, you’d have to come down in scale significantly,” says Talty. “Beyond that, [the committee leaders] showed a lot of courage and vision in pushing for a full-scale renovation that would touch some very sacred spaces while trying to repair what had been a badly neglected infrastructure. And at the same time, much of that space wouldn’t just be restored—it would be reinvented to better fit how the club needed to function, not only today, but for its next generation of members.”
Taking such a forward look at the same time the club was trying to carefully preserve its past proved to be a tricky proposition, Talty adds. “The existing structure was limiting, especially in terms of things like ceiling heights,” he notes. “And as we got into the needed updates of mechanical systems, the magnitude of many of the problems proved to be much more enormous than anticipated. It soon went well beyond just aesthetics.”
That only led at first to more grumbling, Hammond reports. “After we shut the clubhouse down to start in July 2006, at first it was very slow, because as we tore down walls, we kept discovering new things,” he says. “By Christmas, it looked like the Army had come in and bombed us. And there were many who were eager to point that out and say there was no way it was all going to get done properly, or on time.”
Tightly Run Team
But just as the renovation advocates, led by the Permanent Planning Committee, had stuck to their guns in fighting off the initial push to replace the building, they now put up a strong front to keep the skeptics at arm’s length and allow the project team to forge ahead.
That team was notable for both its limited size and varied makeup. In addition to OKW, it included the project contractor, Valenti Builders, and two Evanston Golf Club members who provided their expertise: Alex Zera, who runs a Chicago-area construction company, and Mary Cook, who heads a Chicago-based interior design firm, Mary Cook and Associates.
The final member of the team, to represent the EGC “staff,” was Bryan Polletta, a 25-year club employee. Polletta was serving as EGC’s Locker Room & Gun Club Manager when the decision was made to close the club (including the golf course) for the renovation and retain only a handful of employees during the year of expected construction. With the club experiencing transition in its General Manager position, Polletta was tapped to be the on-site contact for the various vendors and club members and officers involved with the project.
“Having Bryan in that position was a lifesaver,” says Cook. “He was the go-to guy who, any time of day or night, could get [others on the team] a needed measurement, or take a photo, or get required documents to us. Having been there 25 years, he knew all the nuances of how the place had operated.”
Project team members also credit Hammond’s Planning Commmittee for keeping them shielded from interference, so they could eventually produce results that won over the doubters.
“There was terrific stewardship [by the committee] that allowed the core group to function effectively,” says OKW’s Talty. “From our standpoint, this was a welcomed luxury, especially for a project involving a debate that had gone on for so long and evoked so much passion.”
Hammond says the message conveyed by the committee was straightforward: “From the beginning, we said this cannot be a project that would be governed by the entire membership,” he notes. “We made it clear we were confident in the people we had selected to manage the project and were going to let them do whatever they felt was needed to do it right. By further into the spring the naysaying died down, as people started to see what was being accomplished.
“There are always two big questions,” Hammonds adds, “related to these kinds of projects: Will it be done on time? Will it come within a reasonable range of the budget? In the end, the team ended up doing the entire building, instead of just the 75% we started out to do, and still finished on time and within 5% of [the $13 million] budget.”
New Faces in New Places
But the most impressive results of all became evident once the EGC clubhouse doors were reopened in June 2007, and members and guests alike came back to discover an entirely new club within the same walls and under the same roof.
“It was all worth it, once we were able to watch people’s reactions as they started to come in,” says Zera. “The big thing is how [the renovation] opened up views, not only within the building but in some cases all the way through it. I can’t tell you how many times someone has now said, ‘I didn’t know you could see the golf course from here.’
“Where people were embarrassed before to bring customers out, and our guest rounds were down, now they’re dreaming up reasons to have parties,” Zera adds. “For the members themselves, our locker rooms and lounges have become real hangouts.
“There’s nothing I’d do differently,” Zera says. “From the increased use we’ve seen almost immediately [upon reopening], it’s clear we achieved our goal: to bring the club up to modern standards without losing its character.”
And more than a year after that reopening, many new positive first impressions continue to be made, Cook adds.
“Bryan [Polletta] and Joe Turner [who became the club’s new General Manager after it reopened] still keep telling me after we have a member-guest or other event that they’ve heard more people comment, ‘We need to do this at our club,’ ” Cook says. “And I heard one member say the club is now like an English countryside estate. That really tells me we were successful in restoring [the clubhouse’s] original architectural integrity, and that the heritage we had here was definitely worth saving.” C&RB
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