The Evans at Canal Shores has never looked better.
Patrick Hughes, Jr.
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS | Golf fundamentally functions as an individual sport. But it can also be a team game, especially in the ways it brings people together to do some good. And the recent transformation of a Chicagoland golf facility – from distressed property to model muni – is a prime example of that.
Now called The Evans at Canal Shores, the property originally known as Evanston Wilmette Community Golf Course and later as Peter N. Jans Memorial Golf Course featured a 13-hole layout designed by one of America’s earliest immigrant architects, Tom Bendelow, when it opened in 1919. The addition of five holes a few years later on land within the neighboring burg of Wilmette made it a standard-sized course.
Bisected by the North Shore Channel – a man-made waterway connecting Lake Michigan with the North Branch of the Chicago River – it lies adjacent to what was then known as the Northwestern Elevated Railroad (and today is the Chicago Transit Authority’s Purple line) as well as the Metra commuter train line, with parts of the former actually passing over the layout. Those elements give Canal Shores something of a city feel, and so do the streets from both towns that cross the property at times. But there is a sense of the suburbs as well, thanks to several groves of old-growth oaks on the grounds and the Victorian, Craftsman and Colonial Revival homes that border the property in places.
The course became a favorite among locals as well as Chicagoans looking for a leafy escape from the city. But the complex eventually fell on hard times, due largely to indifferent management and a lack of resources. People who appreciated what it meant to area golfers and the value of an 80-acre green space in a mixed – and, in some cases, financially challenged – community donated time and money to improve its upkeep and operation. But things continued to deteriorate, becoming so bad that a USGA Green Section evaluation several years ago described the facility as being in an “end-of-life” state.
The second hole at Canal Shores lies between the “L” tracks and Evanston Hospital.
“Basically, they said the golf course was not going to survive without significant changes,” said Josh Lesnik, executive vice president of KemperSports, a management company based in the nearby suburb of Northbrook that owns and/or operates some 200 golf courses around the country. “The turf was in terrible shape. There was too much shade and not enough water. And there was no money for maintenance.”
There was, however, a deep desire to save the facility while also making it a sustainable business. That led to the implementation of a $6 million renovation that according to Cade Beckley, the Canal Shores general manager and head golf professional, was intended to “preserve the course’s history while creating an accessible and fun golf experience that connects our community to the game.”
By all accounts, that effort has proved to be a grand success. After only one full year of operation, The Evans at Canal Shores was named by a leading golf publication as one of the top public-access short courses in the country. And the facility fairly bustled with activity through the 2025 season, recording some 25,000 rounds and seeing its youth programs prosper, especially the one for young caddies sponsored by the Western Golf Association and its Evans Scholars Foundation. Through that, 15 boys and girls caddied throughout the summer of 2025 in what they hope will be a first step toward becoming Evans Scholars and having that organization one day cover their college tuition and housing costs.
Work on the Canal Shores restoration began nearly three years ago, with architect Todd Quitno overseeing the redesign of the par-60 course and Wadsworth Golf handling the construction. And it took a little more than a year to redo all the greens, replace the irrigation system and take care of long-standing drainage issues.
The three-hole Lesnik Loop is named in honor of KemperSports founder Steve Lesnik and his son Josh.
courtesy josh lesnik
Quitno also constructed a 30,000-square-foot putting green and short-game area. He built a bunker, too, but only one of them. Located by the first green, which doubles as the youth-development area when those programs are in session, it has no real design purpose and is there primarily to teach the youth caddies how to rake a bunker.
“Todd restored the old Bendelow greens whenever possible,” said Lesnik, who provided architectural input of his own and solicited feedback from Mike Keiser, the founder of Bandon Dunes and father of the modern minimalist golf design movement. “And with those greens that had nothing to them, Todd gave them a bit of a Seth Raynor feel, like the ones that architect had created at Shoreacres and Chicago Golf Club, as kind of an ode to old Chicago. So, the course now has a Punchbowl, a Biarritz, an Alps and a Redan.”
At the same time, those involved in the restoration added other features to ensure the facility functioned as more than just a place to tee it up. Among those were a youth-development training center overseen by the First Tee-Greater Chicago and a series of summer golf programs for youngsters from 5 to 14 years of age run in collaboration with The Golf Practice, a local golf training academy.
Other organizations that stepped up include the Chicago District Golf Association, Wadsworth Golf Charities, Quitno Golf Designs, KemperSports, the Illinois PGA section and Northwestern University, which is based in this North Shore suburb. And the gifts of time and money were augmented by the generosity of many private donors, some of whom also sit on the Canal Shores board.
In 2024, the facility was renamed The Evans at Canal Shores to reflect its deep connection to the Evans Scholars Foundation and its namesake, Chick Evans. A one-time caddie who attended the nearby private Evanston Academy and went on to become one of golf’s greatest competitive amateurs, Evans established that organization with the Western Golf Association in 1930. To date, it has awarded college scholarships to some 13,000 youths.
The Baháʼí House of Worship looms over the layout.
“The course is still the charming and quirky park-like layout it’s always been,” said Lesnik, a longtime area resident who lives just a short drive from the course and sits on the facility’s board. “We simply created a new mission focused on youth development and scholarships, invested in infrastructure so we could improve playing conditions and added some architectural interest and excitement to an already memorable routing.”
The course measures 3,612 yards, with six of the holes par-4s and the rest pars-3s. One of the more interesting of those is No. 7, a 65-yard putting hole, with the stately Baháʼí House of Worship rising just beyond the green.
“We actually have 19 holes,” added Lesnik. “That’s because we sometimes close the first hole for our youth programming, and with that extra hole, we can be sure that people can always have an 18-hole experience.”
There is an adage in sports and business that teams win. And the one that came together to save and sustain The Evans at Canal Shores is doing that in spades.
