Officials to consider annexing country club
Hazel Crest’s Village Board will consider Feb. 14 an annexation of the Calumet Country Club as the village’s mayor denied he’s being influenced in any way by campaign contributions from a potential developer of the site.
Now in unincorporated Cook County, the 130-acre property, northwest of Dixie Highway and 175th Street, has been proposed as a location of a factory to build components for manufactured homes as well as an indoor water park, hotel, retail space and restaurant.
Trustees at a committee meeting Tuesday voted to place the annexation issue on the next Village Board agenda.
Previously, the Hazel Crest Board approved hiring a consultant to study creating a tax increment financing district that would cover the golf course property and offer benefits to development.
Founded in 1901 and annexed to Homewood in 1980, the golf course was most recently proposed as a site for up to 800,000 square feet of warehouse space by property owner Walt Brown Jr.
His company, Arizona-based Diversified Partners, paid $3.3 million in the fall of 2020 for the golf course property.
Homewood officials rejected the plan before voting in April 2021 to allow the country club to disconnect from the village.
Members of South Suburbs for Greenspace, a group largely comprised of Homewood residents who coalesced to combat the original warehouse development, have urged Hazel Crest officials to reject any large-scale redevelopment that relies on industrial uses, such as manufacturing or distribution.
Several spoke at Tuesday’s committee meeting, according to Liz Varmecky, Greenspace founder. The group has been critical of campaign contributions last year totaling $10,000 to Hazel Crest Mayor Vernard Alsberry Jr. by Catalyst Consulting Group,
which is proposing redevelopment.
Catalyst gave $5,000 to Alsberry’s mayoral campaign committee May 12, followed by another $5,000 recorded June 3, according to a financial disclosure report filed by the mayor’s committee with the state board of elections. Greenspace has alluded to possible bribery of the mayor by Catalyst.
Alsberry said some people in the audience at Tuesday’s meeting “were calling me a criminal” regarding the campaign donations and interrupting the board’s proceedings. Varmecky said some 50 people attended.
“It was embarrassing,” the mayor said Wednesday.
Alsberry denied there has been any pay-to-play politics involved in Hazel Crest’s consideration of annexation or development plans.
“I don’t work like that and I never have,” he said Wednesday.
“I get donations from a lot of different people,” Alsberry said. “I have a lot of people trying to help.”
Of the contributions from Catalyst, “people will read into it what they will,” he said.
Catalyst’s principals have identified the firm as the primary developer of the golf course property, although the company has no apparent ownership interest.
Property tax records show a bit more than $350,000 in property taxes owed on the property were paid Jan. 11, according to the Cook County treasurer’s office.
They were paid by W & E Ventures, of Scottsdale, Arizona, and an Illinois Secretary of State records show W & E’s manager is Walt Brown Jr., founder and chief executive of Diversified Partners.
Should the golf course property be annexed to Hazel Crest, it would come in zoned as residential, according to Alsberry. Any redevelopment agreement and rezoning would be negotiated between the property owner and village, he said.
Alsberry has previously said his village is not interested in seeing a large warehouse development on the property should it become part of Hazel Crest, and wants to see more specific plans from Catalyst.