Odana Hills Golf Course Redesign: What It Means Now

"I don't just mean a community of golfers; I mean the neighborhood around it."

That's Michael Keiser, the golf developer behind Sand Valley Resort, describing what he wants Odana Hills Golf Course to become once his family finishes paying for its redesign. He said it to WORT-FM this spring, and it's an odd thing for the person funding a golf course renovation to say. It turns out he meant it literally. When construction starts this fall, the city isn't just rebuilding tees and greens. It's renaming the place. Odana Hills Golf Course is set to become Odana Hills Golf Park, and the city's own planning data suggests that new word, Park, is carrying more weight than a typical rebrand.

A course built for a different west side

Odana Hills opened in 1955, designed by golf architect Larry Packard, according to Wisconsin Golf and the Madison Parks Foundation. A Madison Magazine feature on the project puts the debut two years later, in 1957, based on the memory of a longtime area resident who recalled the construction tearing up his childhood sandlot on Charles Lane. Either way, it was built on land that sat well outside anything you'd have called Madison's retail west side at the time. There weren't yet malls at Westgate or Hilldale.

The clubhouse followed in 1956 and has been booking rounds ever since on what Madison Parks Superintendent Eric Knepp has called one of the busiest public golf courses in the state. It won't make it through this renovation. Planners have already begun the demolition process for the seventy-year-old building, alongside a redesign of the fairways, greens, and course routing led by Craig Haltom Golf Design, as reported by the Cap Times.

None of that, on its own, would be unusual. Golf courses age, clubhouses get replaced, cities patch up public infrastructure constantly. What makes Odana different is who's paying, and what the city has said it expects to get in return.

The rename that already happened once

In 2021, Michael and Jocelyn Keiser, who live in Madison, offered to fund a redesign of the old Glenway Golf Course on Speedway Road. When it reopened in 2022, it wasn't called a golf course anymore. It was The Glen Golf Park, and the shift wasn't just cosmetic. According to the Madison Parks Foundation, rounds and revenue at the site rose more than 40 percent after the reopening, and native plantings increased more than tenfold, cutting into the acreage kept as intensively managed turf. The Glen also added movie nights and live music through the summer, programming that has nothing to do with a scorecard.

Odana Hills is following the same blueprint, and the city has said so in plain terms: the baseline of improvements will be "consistent with The Glen project." The Keisers are again funding the course redesign, an estimated $4.5 to $5 million, while the city is separately requesting about $6.3 million in capital funding for park improvements and the clubhouse rebuild, per the Cap Times reporting on the project.

What 1,300 neighbors actually told the city they wanted

Before any design work started, Madison Parks ran an online survey and held focus groups and public meetings, drawing close to 1,300 responses. More than half of the people who answered identified as regular Odana golfers, according to the Cap Times. But look at what those same respondents said they wanted from the redesigned space, and golf stops being the whole story.

• Interest in cross-country skiing, hiking, nature viewing, and biking at the site came in at roughly double the current usage rate for each activity, according to park planner Brian Kowalski's presentation of the survey results, as reported by WORT-FM.
• Only about 18 percent of respondents said they currently use Odana Hills East Park, the tennis courts tucked into the northeast corner of the property. With the planned upgrades, that figure is expected to climb to 36 percent, doubling in place.
• Nearly 75 percent said they'd use the new clubhouse more often if it's built the way it's being planned, with a full kitchen, a golf service counter, and a beer garden patio open to anyone, not just people teeing off.

At one of the public meetings, some attendees pushed the question further than the survey did, asking outright whether the space should be dedicated to golf at all, per WORT-FM's coverage. The city hasn't answered that directly. But the design brief already reads like a partial answer: better bike and pedestrian routing at what assistant parks superintendent Lisa Laschinger has described as a chaotic shared entrance, a tennis and pickleball court, a new playground, and a bike path tying into the Southwest Commuter Path, layered on top of the new greens.

What actually changes for the neighborhood this year

For anyone who lives near Odana, walks a dog through it, or skis it in January, the timeline matters more than the design renderings.

• Groundbreaking is expected as early as this fall, according to the city's own project page, pending final agreements between the city and the Keiser family.
• At least a portion of the course is expected to close before the end of the 2026 season.
• Full closure is planned for the entire 2027 season, covering the demolition and rebuild of the clubhouse.
• The course and new clubhouse are targeted to reopen in spring or summer of 2028.

During the closure, the city's three other public courses, Yahara Hills, The Glen, and Monona, are expected to stay open. If you're someone who skis Odana's groomed cross-country trails each winter, it's one of three courses in the city system, along with Door Creek and Elver, where a permit is required for that use. Construction doesn't typically pause for snow, so it's worth a call to Madison Parks about whether that access holds through the build or shifts to one of the other two permit courses for a season or two.

Why this is bigger than a golf story

Keiser has said the quiet part out loud twice now, once about the Glen and once about Odana. The survey numbers back him up in a way that press coverage about a world-renowned designer tends to skip past. The growth the city is actually planning for isn't more golfers. It's more of everyone else: tennis and pickleball players, skiers, dog walkers, people who want a bike route that doesn't dump them into a lot full of golf carts. Odana Hills has spent seventy years as a golf course with a park attached to it. What the city's own numbers suggest is that by 2028, it may function the other way around.

If you're keeping an eye on how the west side keeps changing, from redevelopment along Old Sauk Road to a golf course getting a new name, Erika Haar would be glad to talk through what it means for your corner of the neighborhood. Let's Connect.