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Warehousing

Catalyst Consulting pitches development at Calumet Country Club

A developer outlined ambitious plans this week to redevelop the Calumet Country Club with a factory to build components for manufactured homes as well as an indoor water park, hotel and restaurant.

Vince Bass and Jerry Lewis said they are principals of Catalyst Consulting, which is “the majority developer at this point,” according to Lewis.

The 130-acre property, northwest of Dixie Highway and 175th Street, is in unincorporated Cook County after Homewood officials voted in April 2021 to allow the country club to part ways with the village.

Adam Winston, a Glenwood trustee who holds regular forums on Zoom called “Tea and Conversation,” invited Bass and Lewis Monday to talk about the redevelopment proposal, which also allowed residents of Homewood and Hazel Crest to ask questions and express their concerns.

Catalyst said it will also hold an open community meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday in the clubhouse of the country club, 2136 175th St., to talk about its plans.

A meeting on plans to redevelop Calumet Country Club will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday in the clubhouse of the golf course, 2136 175th St.

Founded in 1901 and annexed to Homewood in 1980, the golf course had most recently been proposed as a site for up to 800,000 square feet of warehouse space by property owner Walt Brown Jr. Homewood officials rejected the plan before agreeing to the disconnection.

South Suburbs for Greenspace is a group largely comprised of Homewood residents who coalesced to combat the original warehouse development.

“Our goal has always been to prevent an industrial development from being there,” Liz Varmecky, the group’s founder, said at the forum. “We do not want warehousing, we do not want industrial development there.”

“We think it’s a strong project,” Bass said.

Lewis said he has a background in commercial real estate development and believes the project could create 3,000 jobs, including 400 at a factory producing components for prefabricated housing, with salaries at that factory of at least $55,000 a year. The overall development could create 4,000 construction jobs, he said.

“This concept is community friendly,” he said at the forum.

For now it is just that, a concept, with Catalyst and Brown needing a municipal partner to provide the essential connection to utilities such as sewer and water.

That partner could be Hazel Crest, which borders the golf course on three sides, and the village’s mayor has said that there have been preliminary talks about annexation but nothing more.

Lewis said part of those talks would include a tax increment financing district covering the property, with increased tax revenue generated by any development helping to pay for certain infrastructure costs.

“We absolutely do not have a commitment from the village” regarding annexation or TIF, Lewis said.

He said what is being proposed is a planned unit development with retail space, including a grocery store, along with warehousing, a pet-friendly hotel, indoor sports center with basketball courts and a community center, Lewis said.

Lewis said the plan was carefully thought out with the assistance of a consultant.

“We didn’t just throw something on the wall and say, ‘Hey, let’s pacify the community,” Lewis, a Matteson resident, said.

Gary Dingle, president of the Chicago far south suburban branch of the NAACP, has also been involved with the Greenspace efforts to block industrial development on the property.

Asked by Dingle at the forum whether the components Lewis laid out, such as a hotel and retail space, could stand on their own without warehousing, Lewis said that warehousing is “the largest and greater need.”

“The community doesn’t want trucks, they don’t want the warehouses,” Dingle said.

Hazel Crest residents who were part of the discussion, including Penny Catlett who said she lives about six blocks from the property, expressed concern any warehouse or industrial development could contribute to more pollution and affect property values.

Lewis said plans call for maintaining 30 acres of green space on the property, and that Catalyst would relocate trees and provide a “multitude of trees,” with trees “around the perimeter of the entire development and throughout the development itself.”

Bass said Catalyst realizes that any potential redevelopment is “bigger than just a Homewood issue” and that the company plans to dispense more information about the project to surrounding areas.

“Our main goal is educating people,” he said. “We look forward to more open discussions and dialogue.”

“We’re trying to do what’s best for Hazel Crest,” Bass said.

Arizona-based Diversified Partners paid $3.3 million in the fall of 2020 for the golf course property. Brown is the company’s founder and chief executive.

Lewis said that Catalyst now has “control of the land” but not ownership, although that will change.

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“At the end of the day, Catalyst will own the entire land,” he said. “When the project starts we will be majority owner.”

Memos exchanged among Hazel Crest officials, obtained this summer by Greenspace through a public records request, show doubts being expressed about the commercial viability of some elements of the Catalyst proposal.

In one of the exchanges, Hazel Crest’s village attorney, John Murphey, says he is leery of plans for retail proposed along a strip of Dixie Highway, already in Hazel Crest, as well as components such as a hotel.

Murphey says in a July 11 email to Mayor Vernard Alsberry and Dante Sawyer, village administrator, that he doesn’t believe there is any market for a hotel, considering the number of hotels to the east of Hazel Crest off the intersection of Interstates 80/94 and Halsted Street. That is also where a casino is planned that will include a hotel.

The attorney also doubts the indoor water park that Catalyst has proposed.

“What market is there for such a facility and who will invest?” he asked.

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