Glencoe's Golf Clubhouse Keeps Missing Its Date. Everything Else Downtown Didn't Wait.

If you've been checking the Glencoe Golf Club website for a grand opening date, you've refreshed that page more times than you'd like to admit. The clubhouse Glencoe voters approved back in 2023 was supposed to be open by early 2026. Then summer 2026. Then August 14. That date slipped two weeks, and then, following an August 19 vote by the Village Board, slipped again to September 11, which is now the caveat-laden "substantial completion" date rather than an actual ribbon-cutting.

Meanwhile, the rest of downtown didn't sit around waiting. Two new restaurants opened, the Thursday farmers market is deep into its run, and Glencoe Beach has already quietly shifted into its late-summer schedule. The clubhouse is the project everyone can name. It's also the one thing in Glencoe right now that hasn't actually changed.

The Clubhouse Keeps Slipping in Two-Week Increments

The numbers on this project have a way of creeping. Glencoe voters approved an $18 million redevelopment of the century-old Glencoe Golf Club clubhouse in an April 2023 referendum, with $15 million of that coming from a taxpayer-funded bond. The old clubhouse, more than 100 years old, came down in a single day on May 8, 2025, and a ceremonial groundbreaking followed on May 19.

That was supposed to be the hard part. Instead, the Village Board has now approved six separate change orders on the project since March 2025. The most recent, a $99,935 adjustment approved August 19, pushed the completion date to September 11 and raised the construction contract with builder W.B. Olson to $15.7 million. Public Works Director Monica Sarna explained the delays to the Board as a combination of a wet summer that slowed exterior work and a genuinely unplanned complication: crews discovered an unknown underground storage tank on the site that had to be removed before work could continue.

The finished building will be worth the wait on paper. Plans call for a full-service, year-round restaurant with an indoor dining room and central fireplace, an outdoor terrace facing west for sunset views, and Glencoe's first sports bar. The Village Board also just awarded the food service contract to Clubhouse Group, which operates under the name Housepitality Group and already runs Grill House and Cabo Grill in Northbrook and Backyard Grill in Highland Park. That operator has actually been feeding golfers since March, running interim service out of a temporary setup to keep the course functional through construction. Starting in 2027, Clubhouse Group will pay the Village an annual base fee of $45,000, a detail that tells you the Village is already planning for a version of Glencoe where this building exists and generates revenue, even though right now it's still scaffolding and a completion date that has already moved through six separate change orders.

If you want the plain version: the golf course itself has stayed open the entire time, greens fees this year run $64 for a Saturday round without a cart, and the clubhouse will get there when it gets there.

Two New Kitchens Opened While the Clubhouse Was Still a Construction Site

Here's the part of Glencoe that actually moved this year. Downtown, on Park Avenue and Vernon Avenue, two new restaurants opened their doors months ago, no referendum required.

RDK Sushi took over the former Meg's Café space at 317 Park Avenue, a location previously run by An Apple A Day Catering. The name comes from the initials of the owner's mother and grandfather, the latter being the reason the family has roots in Glencoe in the first place. It's one of the few full sit-down restaurants left in the village, with a menu built around sushi rolls and family-style hot entrees.

A few blocks over at 667 Vernon Avenue, Elyon opened as a Mediterranean tasting-menu restaurant helmed by chef Ozgur Ozkant, who also runs Elia in Wicker Park. Elyon doesn't do à la carte. Every table gets the same multi-course format built around fire-grilled dishes and seasonal ingredients, which is a different kind of bet for a small North Shore downtown to make, and one that's paying off given how often it shows up on recent local best-of lists.

Those two openings sit alongside a set of restaurants that have been fixtures for decades, which is really the more useful way to think about Glencoe's dining scene right now: it's not new versus old, it's new arrivals filling in gaps around a downtown that already had its anchors.

That's a downtown adding new formats, tasting menus, and full sushi service, without displacing what was already working. A clubhouse referendum takes years and change orders to execute. A restaurant lease takes a few months and a good idea.

The Farmers Market Runs on Its Own Clock, and It's Not Slowing Down Yet

Glencoe's own Thursday farmers market, run by the Glencoe Chamber, has been going since June 18, from 3 to 6 p.m. at Village Green Court. The tentative last day is October 8, which means as of late August, there are still roughly seven weeks left on the calendar. Compare that to the golf clubhouse's ever-shifting September date and you notice something: the market's schedule hasn't changed once since it was set.

Residents who want a bigger version of the same idea have the option of the joint Winnetka-Northfield-Glencoe Chamber market, a larger Saturday morning market running 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. through October 31. Last season it drew 141 vendors and more than 45,000 visitors, and this year's roster has included a July 18 appearance from the nonprofit working to restore sections of the Green Bay Trail that run through both Glencoe and Winnetka. It's a bigger production than Glencoe's own Thursday market, but it's built by the same Chamber and pulls from many of the same local vendors, so the two aren't competitors so much as a smaller weekday option and a bigger weekend one.

The Beach Already Switched to Its September Rules

If you've been to Glencoe Beach in the last week, you've probably noticed it feels different, even though it's technically still summer. Since August 17, lifeguards have only been on duty on weekends, which is the Park District's way of easing out of full season without fully closing. The sprayground still runs during operating hours, and the Adda & Paul Safran Beach House still rents paddleboards, kayaks, and sailboats, but the same 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. lifeguard coverage that ran every day in July now only happens on Saturdays and Sundays.

One rule hasn't caught up yet: pets are still not allowed on Glencoe Beach until September 15. So residents with dogs are looking at just over three more weeks where the beach has already thinned out on weekday lifeguard coverage but still hasn't opened up to the leash crowd. It's a small overlap, but it's the kind of detail that only matters if you actually live here and plan your evenings around it.

The Real Pattern This August

Put these threads next to each other and the shape becomes obvious. The project with the most public money, the most political process, and the most attention, the golf clubhouse, is the one still stuck in September uncertainty after six change orders and a construction contract that's grown by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everything else that makes Glencoe feel different this year already happened without a referendum: two restaurants opened, the farmers market kept its June-to-October schedule, and the beach shifted into its fall rules right on time.

That's not a knock on the clubhouse. Big civic infrastructure is supposed to take longer and cost more than anyone hopes, especially when a construction crew finds a buried storage tank nobody knew was there. But if you've been waiting for some single moment when Glencoe's downtown "arrives," the honest answer is that it already has, in RDK Sushi's dining room and at Elyon's tasting-menu tables, months before anyone cuts a ribbon at the golf course.

If you're watching Glencoe's day-to-day changes because you're also thinking about what's next for your own address in the village, the Geoff Brown Team knows this downtown block by block, from the restaurants that just opened to the projects still working through their punch list. Reach out when you're ready for a free home valuation and a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground here, not just what's on the calendar.