Ryan Companies Steps Into Calumet Country Club Fight

Another developer is throwing their hat in the ring to redevelop a suburban Chicago country club and golf course for industrial use — but not without resident opposition.

Ryan Companies, the Minneapolis-based developer behind projects for Amazon and Target, entered one of Chicagoland’s longest-running real estate battles — the redevelopment of Calumet Country Club, located at 2136 175th Street, straddling the Hazel Crest and Homewood border. The company confirmed this month that it has a purchase and sale agreement for the 130-acre property, where multiple past attempts to rezone the site for industrial use have met fierce resistance, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Ryan’s vice president of real estate development, Kyle Schott, pitched the firm’s interest to Hazel Crest’s village board on Oct. 14, describing it as the start of a “transparent dialogue” with residents about the site’s future.

“We’ve identified industrial as a very good use at this stage,” Schott said during the meeting, while emphasizing that other options could be explored depending on market studies and community feedback. “We have our thoughts, but we need to find alignment with other folks that might have different ideas.”

That cautious framing didn’t stop local advocates from sounding the alarm. The South Suburbs for Greenspace coalition, which has fought industrial development of the club since 2020, argues that warehouses would erase one of the area’s few major green spaces — a tree-dense site providing what they call an essential air buffer between Interstates 80 and 294.

“We don’t meet people anywhere who are for this development,” said co-founder Liz Varmecky, who said her group has canvassed thousands of residents. “There’s almost no green space in Hazel Crest or Homewood … this is about protecting what’s left.”

The latest fight follows a years-long tug-of-war between the two suburbs and Arizona developer Walt Brown Jr., who bought the golf course in 2020 with plans to turn it into a warehouse park. Homewood blocked his rezoning request amid local outcry, prompting Brown to detach the property from the village and have it annexed into Hazel Crest under a legal settlement. His team later sought the same zoning changes through a new firm, Catalyst Consulting, before those efforts also stalled.

Hazel Crest residents — a majority-Black, largely middle-class community — view the industrial push as both environmentally and economically harmful. Varmecky said she believes developers assume the area would welcome low-wage warehouse jobs, a notion she called “offensive and out of touch.”

Opponents want the Forest Preserves of Cook County or another public entity to buy and protect the land instead. They’ve warned that an industrial project would likely depend on a tax increment financing district, or TIF, freezing property tax growth for more than two decades.

Ryan Companies declined to comment on community opposition. Schott said the firm intends to close on the site — all at once or in phases — and proceed with development if it can secure approvals.— Eric Weilbacher