Area duffers have lost another golf course to the bulldozer. Some hackers may lament this latest destruction, but don’t despair during these early blasts of winter.

The 18-hole Village Green links at Midlothian and Winchester roads has begun its transition into a major sports complex with multiple uses for student athletes at Mundelein High School. Indeed, officials were so eager to start work on the project that they hounded one of the last foursomes on the course on the balmy afternoon of Sept. 14.

“They were pulling up the flags (from the cups) before we got to the greens,” one golfer, a Mundelein High graduate, said the other day. “We said, ‘Hey, we won’t be able to see the pins.’

“They told us they were moving them because people would be taking them as collectors’ items,” he added.

It’s the Mustangs, not the Masters. This is the Village Green, not the hallowed Augusta National in Georgia.

A few days later, backhoes were on the course ripping up the greens as grading on the Village Green project started in earnest. A large billboard along Midlothian Road now trumpets the conversion.

Plans for the property include eight tennis courts, a softball field, a baseball field, a multipurpose field for Mustang soccer and lacrosse, and a lighted parking lot. District 120 officials say bids for the work came in at $4.2 million, nearly $1 million less than budgeted.

Village Green had to be the only golf course in the Land of Lincoln owned by a school district. With the plans, Mundelein High folks seem to be taking a page from the Waukegan Park District.

More than a decade ago, the district turned the old Orchard Hills Golf Course along Green Bay Road into the state-of-the-art Greg Petry SportsPark, which features lots of soccer and softball fields, along with walking trails. Orchard Hills, designed by famed golf course architect Robert Trent Jones Jr., opened in the early 1960s when golf course construction was at its high point across the region.

Similarly, the centrally located par-70 Village Green opened in 1962 and was designed by Ray Didier, the former superintendent of the once-renowned Tam O’Shanter course in Niles. The Tam, which has shrunk to nine holes, was known for hosting Western Open tourneys in the mid-1960s. Since then, golf courses haven’t fared well.

If not for the Lake County Forest Preserves, which purchased golfing staples Brae Loch in Wildwood and Countryside in Mundelein, and some area municipalities, even more of these passive green spaces would be turned into housing or commercial uses.

Some may remember the 6,000-yard Village Green was once surrounded by corn fields, with the North Hills subdivision, where single-family homes were built between 1961 and 1963, to its south. This was before houses were built heading south on both sides of Midlothian Road.

Mundelein High bought the property for about $8.4 million in 2004, with long-range plans for building a second District 120 school. With enrollment numbers not increasing as anticipated, officials instead decided to again expand the high school at Midlothian and Hawley Street.

The Village Green project is part of that massive facilities improvement project, which began in March. Dirt from the construction site at the high school, where eight new classrooms on the west side are being built, is being shuttled to the Village Green area for grading fill.

Officials say work on the new classrooms is on schedule. Concrete was poured in September, and steel beams went up in October. The largest part of the work, which includes adding a stormwater detention system to the south end of the school, is set for the spring and summer of 2026.

That’s when the high school’s “D wing” on the north side will be razed, with work turning to building a multipurpose fieldhouse and renovating the cafeteria.  Much of the new improvements are focusing on parts of the school’s original 1958 design layout: The cafeteria, kitchen, gym and auditorium.

“We’re very happy with our progress at this point,” Corey Tafoya, superintendent of districts 75 and 120, said in a statement. “It’s very exciting to see the project taking shape. But we know we have a long way to go.”

The project is being funded mainly by a $149.5 million bond issue that District 120 voters endorsed in the November 2024 election. The district is financing current construction with $50 million in debt service funds and has still not issued any of the approved referendum bonds.

District officials have said the construction will upgrade aging infrastructure, solve overcrowding, and add space to improve career and technical education programs at the school, which opened in 1961. Before that, Mundelein and Fremont Township high school students attended classes at the Butler Lake Building and freshmen Brainerd Building in what was then Libertyville-Fremont High School District 128.

In the long run, changing the Village Green golf course into the MHS sports park will mean more usage by Mundelein students, just not golfers. And weekend players who challenged the course will need to find another site to hit ‘em hard and long.

Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor. 

sellenews@gmail.com

X @sellenews

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/08/column-mundelein-sports-complex/