Growing the game: DuPage golf preserve revenues top $8 million

Revenue generated by all three golf courses run by the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County totaled $8.38 million last year, the agency’s director of golf said Tuesday.

The district owns The Preserve at Oak Meadows in Addison, sister course Maple Meadows in Wood Dale and the 9-hole Green Meadows in Westmont. The $8.38 million in combined revenue was the highest total on record for the district’s three “golf preserves,” Ed Stevenson confirmed.

As one of the faces of golf in DuPage County — he received the 2024 Illinois PGA Executive of the Year award — Stevenson has championed a philosophy that views the district’s properties as “golf preserves.”

As part of a two-year project, the district reconfigured Oak Meadows and added more stormwater storage capacity. Just 15% of the site’s 288 acres is dedicated to fairways, greens and teeing areas, the district has said.

“It was a little over a decade ago that we, I think, came to the realization and intent that these properties happen to have golf recreation, but they are otherwise preserves,” he told forest preserve commissioners. “They provide habitat, and they do things that our other properties can provide to the community as well for stormwater management and lots of other benefits.”

The forest preserve board in December 2023 also approved a master plan for extensive improvements at Maple Meadows. Plans for renovations were out to bid this spring, Stevenson said via email, and the district anticipates a contract for renovations will be presented to the board sometime in May.

The master plan recommends modernizing the golf infrastructure, reducing the number and size of bunkers and converting “managed turf areas” to native areas to reduce the amount of herbicide and fertilizer needed and increase native habitat, among other upgrades.

The renovation work would start after the end of the golf season in late 2025 and continue through 2026. A renovated Maple Meadows would reopen for golf sometime during the 2027 season.

At Green Meadows, some of the areas around golf also have been converted to a “more balanced prairie,” Stevenson said.

“It’s with revenues from greens fees, cart fee rentals, food and beverage sales, that we’re actually able to pay for projects like that, as well as the ongoing maintenance of locations like The Preserve at Oak Meadows,” he said.

The district’s “golf operations are tasked with making sure that enough revenue is brought in to pay for the expenses to operate those preserves, and what we’ve seen in recent years is really a very good trajectory for doing so,” Stevenson said. “We’ve seen continued growth and participation.”

The number of golf rounds topped 100,000 in 2023 and held steady last year at 97,200.

“Last year we found them to be very steady at The Preserve at Oak Meadows as well as Green Meadows,” Stevenson said, adding that there was a slight decline in play at Maple Meadows golf course. But overall, “that did not stop our trajectory of increases” in terms of revenues, Stevenson said.

By the time golf paid for all of the labor, supplies and services that are also associated with operations, “we see that there was an operating profit of a little over $2.5 million in 2024,” Stevenson told forest preserve commissioners.

About $1.1 million was reinvested into capital renewal projects, equipment and the Maple Meadows improvement plan, according to his annual golf update.

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