The Former Crest Hills Country Club

In a small Ohio village, where the population hangs just below 4,000, there's a park. It's trails are former cart paths and it's gleaming waters are former traps, once the nemesis of golfers who were willing to pony up a hefty yearly membership fee. Then there's the clubhouse, where the wedding receptions no longer happen, the sunday brunches are no longer served, and the pool out back is empty aside from algae ridden, stagnant water.

The former aquatic facilities of the Crest Hills Country Club.

I think of country clubs as the lairs of mid-90's Adam Sandler movie villains. Growing up, the only memberships we had were to the city pool, then Surf Cincinnati, and eventually Kings Island. Even when I started playing golf, we never visited country clubs or sought out invitations to any. There were plenty of other places around the city—their greens just as nice and fairways just as frustrating. So perhaps it was fitting that the first country club I visited was an abandoned one on a hot summer evening quite awhile ago with my buddy, the talented Nathan Laux.

It was the kind of summer day that would've been perfect for swimming. It had rained a little bit earlier and dark clouds were still overhead, but the starting-to-set-sun was managing to peek through. Humid and hot, the sound of tennis rackets echoed in the distance. After all, beyond the trees that hide the empty swimming pool, there’s still an active park. Weeds grew through cracks in the foundation, right up through the paint that used to indicate lines for lap swimming. In the "deep end," just under the half dismantled diving board there was still some water in stagnant puddles above clogged drains.

The snack bar and locker rooms were empty, as were the maintenance facilities. A place that would've once teemed with activity on hot days years ago was now eerily quiet. As we sweated profusely while making photographs, we could almost feel the energy this place would've once had back was once crowded with people on a humid summer evening.

Yet the swimming facilities, and the entire Crest Hills Country Club to be exact, were no more. The area had become Amberley Green—a beautiful park lined with old trees and natural features crisscrossed by an asphalt path. All of it's an easy creation when a golf course closes and you want a walking trail in its place. The green is the product of a zoning battle that could've seen high priced homes dotting the landscape instead of nature (and an abandoned swimming pool).

Crest Hills Country Club had been in operation on these grounds even before Amberley Village incorporated in 1940. By 1966, the village classified the country club's property as a "park" under their zoning guidelines.  Crest Hills peaked in 1985 with 420 members and remained exclusively Jewish until 1999 or so (Amberly Village being the largest Jewish community in the greater-Cincinnati area). By April of 2002, Crest Hills merged with the nearby Losantiville Country Club to form one entity: "The Ridge Club." The two establishments had combined their boards of directors and membership groups, initially providing two clubhouses and two courses. By December of 2003, the Ridge Club closed the former Crest Hills 18-hole course and its other facilities to focus on the former Losantiville one. Quickly, they began plans to sell the Crest Hills property to developers seeking to build homes on the property. Their only problem: the property was zoned as a park.

The Ridge Club asked Amberly Village for a zoning change: remove the park classification and designate the area as residential. That way they could sell the property (prime, mostly flat land in an upscale area) to a home developer for a nice price. The city's politicians and residents seemed to be divided: take in new tax revenue from more residents or keep the zoning in hopes of keeping the green space?

In the end, the local government denied the zoning change.

Kiddie pool. 

The Ridge Club didn't take things lightly. The lack of a zoning change had forced them to back out on a $7.6 million deal with developer Hal Homes. They filed a lawsuit, unhappy with the village's refusal to amend the zoning laws. The Village council fired back with a list of citations and code violations that needed to be fixed on the property. 

Image via Nathan Laux.

In the meantime, Jerry Carrol stepped forward and tried to buy the property from The Ridge Club. Jerry was a former owner of the Turfway Park horse racing track and owner of Kentucky Speedway. His purchase offer and mayor-endorsed mixed-use plan eventually fell through. The lawsuit continued while Crest Hills remained shuttered and Losantiville continued on as "The Ridge Club."

Diving board.

The Ridge folks would eventually win, but not until 2007.

The Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas had weighed in on the zoning issue and found that The Ridge Club was essentially in the right, that the zoning should've changed and that they should be able to pursue a sale to a residential developer. 

The village, now firmly of the opinion to keep the property as green space, stepped in to buy the property from The Ridge Club. The price tag: $8.7 million. A cool $1.1 million more than the originally thwarted $7.6 million deal.

Children's pool rules.

The Ridge Club went on to rebrand back to the Losantiville Country Club name and they still exist today. As for the former Crest Hills club—that property became Amberley Green. No houses ever came, the debt from the property purchase was eventually paid off and Amberley Village kept its green space after all. Tucked away in all that green though, there's part of the property's past—a weed riddled swimming pool that was still fun to visit one hot, summer afternoon awhile ago.

And for the record: that Adam Sandler movie about golfing is terrible.

Update | September 5, 2023:

• Thanks to Jim, who wrote in with the below photographs and shared some memories via e-mail. In addition to what he shared, there are some great comments below from the folks who knew this place when it was still active.

  • From Jim: “[Crest Hills] used to host the U.S Open qualifier, men's and women's City Championship, and many golf outings that raised money for charities, such as Hospice of Cincinnati. Through the Evans Scholarship program, many deserving local high school students had their college room and board paid for for them. Having the club was a real benefit to the community. It paid for part of my high school (and many other young people's) college tuition who worked summers there, and the members of the club were just terrific.”

How hole #2 and the course first looked when Jim started there as an employee in the 1970s.

Hole #2, years later, with matured trees and a sand bunker added.

Hole #1.

Hole #9.