Wisconsin university golf course's history from private club to park

Smack in the middle of plans to make good on a last-minute bid to turn 535 acres of hills and trees into a northeastern Wisconsin university back in the 1960s: The Shorewood Country Club.

There was no getting around its clubhouse, pond, maintenance building, and 18 holes on 135 acres within the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus. It was a quarter of the university’s land. Its southern half occupied much of what was imagined as the campus’ core, where the administrative buildings, student and conference centers, and the library would sit.

The university “would have to occupy at least the southern portion almost immediately” for its development, the state’s Department of Administration said in the university’s first master plan from November 1968. Construction had already begun on the campus’ first phase of building classrooms and facilities. Classes were scheduled to start in the fall the following year.

To accommodate the growth, the administration department’s engineering bureau recommended shrinking the golf course in three phases.

A full-length course with nine holes would stay on the northern half until the university’s growth needed to shrink the course further, leaving room for “a shorter game of golf” still with nine holes on “26 acres of the most scenic portion of the course,” the plan said. The plan proposed researching possibilities to join the course into the university’s larger athletic and physical education programs and recommended the university expand onto the remaining land only if the student population grew past 12,000 people by 2000. (The university counted 11,560 students for the 2025-26 academic year.)

The plan was published with the expectation that the university “will assume full control of the country club by the fall of 1969.”

Layout of UWGB 18-hole golf course with construction phasing from 1969 to 1970

The Shorewood Company operating the country club, however, had no intention of accepting a final offer from Brown County to sell its course for $670,000. The company had operated the club after a group of golfers found the area’s golf courses lacking in 1930 and opened the Shorewood Country Club on Aug. 8, 1931, with nine holes. In 1940, it grew to 18 holes, then operated for over three decades with regular profits and debt from the expansion.

The company would not accept selling the course for less than $852,060 – what the company believed to be the “absolute minimum replacement cost” to find, move, and establish a new course for its members, according to a May 1967 notice in the golf bulletin The 19th Hole. The company had hired an appraiser and legal services. The Green Bay Press-Gazette reported that the Shorewood Company sued the county in September 1967 to stop the county from condemning their property and then donating the land to the university.

After a circuit court judge ruled that condemnation was legal, the company appealed its case to the state Supreme Court in September 1968.

Shorewood Country Club went from an 18-hole course to nine holes.

The company held its annual shareholder meeting on Dec. 4, 1968, at the Brown County Courthouse, according to a notice in The 19th Hole. President Fred Schwartz answered questions about the condemnation, which “was an interesting session that cleared the air about many things for some members,” the notice said. The shareholders voted six members to the board of directors. All six were in favor of dissolving the company, the notice said.

Two weeks later, on Dec. 18, 1968, the Brown County Board voted to buy the golf course for $920,000, the Press-Gazette reported at the time. The directors agreed to sell and dismiss the company’s appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The club was allowed to use the course until September 1969, when it closed as a private golf course, a university news release said at the time. About 200 members were ready to join a new corporation led by Carl Basten of New Franken to build a golf course in the Town of Scott, the Press-Gazette reported.

The Shorewood Company moved to what’s now Royal Scot Golf Course & Supper Club, 4831 Church Road in the Town of Scott, which bills itself as a premier golf course with 18 challenging holes. It opened in 1971, the year that the old Shorewood course finished converting to nine holes, according to a facility management summary.

The nine holes remained until, in 2021, the university decided to close the golf course, citing the $100,000 it cost to maintain the grounds and lack of a qualified manager. The outlines of the nine holes visible on satellite images north of the Weidner Center are now Shorewood Park with its disc golf, an outdoor adventure center, an all-season trail network, and ROTC land navigation courses.