St. Clair Shores Golf Club to renovate first tee

ST. CLAIR SHORES — The St. Clair Shores Golf Club is renovating its first tee, and they’re selling memorial bricks to pay for renovations.

Matthew Crippen, golf course operations manager, said the first tee hasn’t been renovated since the 1970s. Their plans right now are to improve landscaping, install a new retaining wall, add paver stone walk-ups and add a new golf clock that has four faces instead of two.

The item was originally presented to the St. Clair Shores City Council at the Dec. 4, 2023, meeting. It was a part of the proclamations and presentation portion of the meeting.

The golf course is selling custom brick pavers to pay for the new renovations, Crippen said. During the December meeting, he said the area of brick pavers is around 150 feet to 160 feet.

“Some people are doing them as in honor of somebody or someone (who) passed away, some are doing it for a hole-in-one they got, some are doing it for their business,” Crippen said.

He also said a lot of people are listing each member of their family on the bricks as well.

“So pretty much (you) can do it any way you want on there,” Crippen said.

During the December meeting, those presenting said the money will also be used to install a flagpole where the water tower once was. Crippen said they do have a part of the original hatch of the water tower and the city also has a piece of it. He said the decision about what to do with the pieces depends on the City Council.

“But we might use something from the water tower and make something out of it or some kind of idea,” Crippen said at the December meeting.

Mayor Kip Walby said they will involve the Historical Commission in making a memorial plaque for the water tower.

Crippen said the plan and what they need is to get 150 to 200 bricks sold. The golf course is going to get the initial order of bricks which takes around 10 or 11 weeks, and then install the bricks. Blank bricks will be in place until more customized bricks are sold. They have room for around 500 bricks to sell. Right now, they have around 60 bricks sold.

“We could obviously go bigger if it gets bigger than that,” Crippen said. “But we can’t really order the clock and some of the other stuff until we sell the bricks. The bricks are paying for everything.”

Plans will start in the spring with the bushes and other vegetation surrounding the first tee. Once they sell the bricks, the clock will be built in July. The clock itself will take around four months to get built and installed, Crippen said.

Crippen said they are very excited for the renovations and the excitement was echoed at the council meeting on Feb. 20 as well as at the December meeting. Walby said the Golf Club was opened in 1975, making next year its 50-year anniversary. He also said they average around 50,000 rounds of golf on the course.

“Another great facility here in St. Clair Shores and they do a great job maintaining that,” Walby said.

There are four options for the bricks with prices ranging from $100 to $275 at different levels of customization. The size of the brick and the lines of text also vary.