Du Page County Forest Preserve commissioners increased the pressure on owners of the Black Horse Golf Course Tuesday by agreeing to ask a court to decide its worth, if necessary.
The commission voted 18-3 to condemn the family-owned course if negotiations to buy it are fruitless. The Village of Westmont and its park district have agreed to contribute $2 million to help the forest preserve buy the 50-acre course.
Westmont officials have estimated the nine-hole course is worth up to $5 million.
”We`ve not completed the negotiations, but we`re very close to completion,” said Craig Hubert, the forest preserve district`s administrative officer. ”This is the next step necessary to keep the process moving.”
Hubert acknowledged the vote to condemn the land could be interpreted as a way of urging the owners to settle out of court.
The course is the fourth golf course the district has targeted for acquisition since it sold $100 million in general obligation bonds and started the land purchase program nearly two years ago. Tuesday`s commission vote is the latest in a two-year impasse over the fate of the course, just south of 63d Street and west of Cass Avenue. Westmont officials have long urged the commission to buy it, but for various reasons, the plans always fell through. Commissioner Gertrude Coit, of Darien, who has lobbied her colleagues to buy the course, said Tuesday she hoped the vote to condemn the land was a signal the district would finally buy Black Horse.
As recently as March, the commission discussed buying the course. But that jeopardized negotiations between the course`s owners and Westmont, which was attempting to buy the course on its own after getting no commitment from the district.
Westmont officials have said the course was important as open space in the village. A Downers Grove development company had proposed building townhouses there, but the deal fell through because the firm couldn`t get the property rezoned for residential use.
The commission has filed condemnation lawsuits against the 18-hole Brookwood Golf Course in Wood Dale and the 27-hole Old Wayne Golf Course near West Chicago. It also had discussed buying the 18-hole Carriage Greens Country Club in Darien. It now operates the 200-acre, 18-hole Oak Meadows Golf Course, which is the former Elmhurst Country Club.
Also on Tuesday, the commission agreed to condemn 30 acres south of the 200-acre West Chicago Prairie if negotiations to buy aren`t productive. The commission previously had agreed to negotiate a price for the land.
The commission agreed to drop plans to buy a half-acre in Elmhurst, south of North Avenue and west of Ill. Hwy. 83. The commission had entered an intergovernmental agreement with Elmhurst to buy the land, but both reneged because the property contains a restaurant parking lot.
