Glencoe Golf Club Built Its New Clubhouse for the Months Nobody Golfs
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026
The final golf event of the 2026 season at Glencoe Golf Club is the Hard Course Chili Open on Saturday, November 7, and it is already sold out. Four days later, the club's new restaurant, The Westley, is expected to open inside a clubhouse whose dining room, bar, simulator suite and event room were all planned for the season after the course goes quiet.
The building at 621 Westley Road opened with a ribbon-cutting on October 23. Golf is only one of its uses. The building is laid out like a restaurant that happens to sit beside a golf course, and the village signed a contract with its operator that rewards every dinner, cocktail and private party booked there. For Glencoe residents who have never swung a club, that makes it the newest year-round dining room in the village.
Glencoe Golf Club counts more than 45,000 visitors who play the course each year. The new clubhouse is sized for far more than golfers stopping in between rounds. At the October 23 ceremony, Village Manager Philip Kiraly described the capacities, as The Record North Shore reported:
| Space | Reported capacity |
|---|---|
| Main dining room | 100 seated |
| Bar area | 60 |
| Outdoor terrace | 75 seated |
| Private event room | 50 |
| Whole building and outdoor spaces | 300 |
The terrace seats 75 and is a summer space. The 160 seats in the dining room and bar are indoors and heated, and that is where most of the building's capacity sits. The club's project page calls the bar "the first 'sports bar' in Glencoe," with TVs and both bar and table seating, and it describes a dining room built around a central fireplace. The design takes its cues from the Prairie School homes of the North Shore, including the central hearth that is a staple of Frank Lloyd Wright's great rooms.
The heating and cooling are geothermal, the building holds LEED Silver certification, and the windows use bird-safe glass. Kiraly cited all three at the opening. For a building expected to host lunch and dinner through January, how cheaply it stays warm affects how long it stays open.
The operator is Clubhouse Group, which also runs Grill House and Cabo Grill in Northbrook and Backyard Grill in Highland Park. Trustees approved its contract unanimously on August 19. According to The Record's March report on the selection, owner Nick Drivas, a Glenbrook North graduate, was named to lead the restaurant and bar, special events and golf food service. The same report says the group won out over four other proposals. A 10-member advisory panel that included Village President Howard Roin and a pair of local restaurateurs narrowed the field to two finalists, and a tasting decided it.
According to The Record's August report, the contract works like this:
The base fee does not start until 2027, so for this first winter the village's share comes from percentages of what people order and book, plus the room rental fees. The highest percentage in the contract applies to catering and private events. The contract is built to pay the village most when the building is booked for holiday parties, business lunches and community gatherings, and those are the events a heated, fireplace-centered room with a 50-person private space can host in December.
Golf Club General Manager Stella Nanos described what the partnership is meant to deliver. "This partnership is designed to offer robust year-round hospitality, including our full-service restaurant and bar, which will be offering a variety of delicious brunch, lunch and dinner menus, an extensive wine and cocktail list, variety of meal options, and children's menus," she said, as The Record reported. The contract also calls for an on-site special event manager to support private celebrations and village-sponsored events.
The Westley. The village's announcement describes classic and fine American fare, local draft beers, fine wines and signature cocktails, including a house Westley Old Fashioned. The restaurant's OpenTable page still says "Coming Soon." Its posted menu includes pasta, filet and strip steak, lamb chops, seafood and chicken. Its posted hours are lunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and dinner from 4 to 9 p.m. daily, and reservations are released one day ahead. These are pre-opening listings, so the hours may change after the doors open.
The simulator suite. The club's homepage lists the simulator suite as open, with two TrackMan bays for virtual rounds and swing analysis. Optional TruGolf software turns the bays into multisport and family arcade games, and The Westley serves food and drinks to your bay. The TrackMan booking page lists a public one-hour rental at $60, though that option was marked unavailable in late October. Check it again after The Westley opens.
The private room. The clubhouse has a 50-person private event room, The Record reported. The restaurant page takes event inquiries through a web form and lists a combined capacity of 150 for the main dining room and private event space.
A clubhouse with this much indoor capacity was meant to open sooner. A June 2024 timeline reported by The Record projected completion at the end of 2025. The building sits partly on Cook County Forest Preserve land under a lease that runs to 2049, and The Record reported that talks with the county over extending that lease or compensating the village stalled in the summer of 2024. A later draft agreement had Glencoe paying the Forest Preserves at least $349,000 and removing 32 trees on county property. At the October ribbon-cutting, Cook County Commissioner Scott Britton joked that at times he felt like "an unpaid mediator in this process," The Record reported.
The Record's coverage traces the schedule in five steps.
Each slip pushed the opening later in the year. A building that would have debuted with a full summer of golfers will instead first prove itself as a winter restaurant.
The Friends of the Glencoe Golf Club have raised more than $2.3 million toward a $3 million goal and presented the village with a $1 million check at the opening, The Record reported. Nanos credited that money with a regulation croquet court, an event lawn, a pollinator garden, a community garden and a monarch butterfly sanctuary. It also paid for 32 new trees, and native species make up 75 percent of the new landscaping. The irons-only practice range was re-sodded with 30,000 square feet of fairway-grade turf.
"Winter Recreation Areas" appear on the club's list of planned enhancements for the 126-acre site, and the 2023 referendum materials proposed cross-country skiing and sledding. No winter schedule for those uses has been posted yet. For now, the clubhouse itself is the winter draw. Golf Advisory Committee member Matt Siebert told The Record that the building will allow year-round activities "even after the golf course closes for the winter."
The facility is open to the public with no membership fees. Village President Howard Roin made the same point at the ribbon-cutting. The club is available to all Cook County residents, and many Glencoe residents who backed the clubhouse do not play golf.
The Westley's opening also shifts where Glencoe eats this winter. Mensch's Deli and Picnic are scheduled to close their Glencoe locations at 668 Vernon Ave. on November 22. Their Evanston flagships stay open. Pete Kadens is planning a fourth concept for that space, with a full bar, thin-crust pizza and an upstairs private-event room, and he hopes to open it in late first quarter 2027, according to The Record. Between late November and that reopening, the newest full-bar dining room in the village will be on Westley Road, not Vernon Avenue.
For a December gathering of up to 50 people, the clubhouse's private room books through the event inquiry form, and its rental fees go straight to the village.
If you are planning to host this season on the North Shore, at the clubhouse or at home, Jena Radnay and our team would be glad to share what we know about the village's newest rooms. Request a Private Consultation.
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