Golfing tradition continues

Silver Lake Country Club in Orland Park off the market as Coghill family continues golf, banquet operations

The owners of Silver Lake Country Club in Orland Park have taken the property off the market, which had been eyed as potentially being redeveloped for housing, one of the owners said Monday.

With the lifting of COVID19 restrictions that had limited the number of golfers on Silver Lake courses at a given time and curtailed banquet operations, business has bounced back, prompting the decision to take the 300-acre property, northwest of 151st Street and 82nd Avenue, off the market, said Amy Coghill, whose family has operated the club since the late 1930s.

“We have had our best two years on record and we’re very happy and in a great position to continue on for many years to come,” she said.

The Coghill family had hired the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle in early 2021 to market the property, she said.

Silver Lake features two 18-hole courses, the north and south courses, along with a 9-hole course, Rolling Hills, and Coghill said there had been “great interest” from potential buyers who looked at redeveloping the property, which her family considered.

“When the news first came out, the community was in an uproar,” she said.

Leaving the clubhouse and 18 holes intact and developing the rest for homes was among the proposals the Coghill family entertained, Coghill, a fourth-generation owner, said.

“In the end, we realized that the business would be better off staying as it is,” she said.

The decision to initially put the property up for sale came not long after pandemic restrictions were put in place, and Silver Lake’s potential future as a golf and banquet facility were unknown, she said.

“The world was very different then,” she said. “We didn’t know where things were going at the time.”

Apart from the golf courses, Silver Lake has three banquet rooms with a combined capacity of 400 people.

Limits on indoor gatherings, such as wedding receptions, severely curtailed that part of the business, Coghill said.

By last summer, however, as indoor restrictions on crowds were eased, that business began to improve in conjunction with more golfers streaming onto the courses, she said.

“Luckily, we have had our amazing dedicated customers

who made the course so busy,” she said. “Rounds of golf have been increasing steadily since the pandemic.”

For nonprofit organizations hosting fundraisers and businesses wanting to network with customers, Silver Lake has also seen increased popularity of golf outings, she said.

Coghill said that Silver Lake had, up until the pandemic, seen rounds of golf played declining, and noted that a “crazy overbuilding of golf courses” in the early 2000s had put a financial stress on all courses.

“Nobody was making any money for a few years,” she said.

She also said Silver Lake is at a disadvantage compared with other courses that are not independently owned but operated by a municipality or park district, and in turn their operations are subsidized.

Coghill said that for every round of golf played, about $6 of what Silver Lake takes in goes toward taxes, mainly property taxes.