Meadows Club shows its new look
Shobhan Thakker remembers playing tennis at the Meadows Club when he was growing up in Barrington.
Now an attorney in New York, he was back in July to celebrate his wedding with 600 people in what -- after a multimillion-dollar transformation -- is an upscale setting for weddings, conventions and artistic events.
"The hall was first class," he said. "Overall, it's a great venue."
Miriam St. John, annual fund manager for the Northwest Community Healthcare Foundation, booked the hall for a fashion show fundraiser Oct. 12 that drew 630 people.
Last winter, "it was literally like walking over dirt floors," she said. A couple of weeks ago, she was holding a reception in the spacious lobby and the fashion show on the stage and 80-foot runway in the grand ballroom.
Supporting such events are state-of-the-art sound and video projection systems, well-appointed dressing rooms for entertainers, suites with private baths for bridal parties, multiple bars and a huge commercial kitchen.
"They truly bent over backward," St. John said, adding she found the place less corporate feeling than some past settings. "We had great comments about the room."
Spearheading creation of the new Meadows Club is Madan Kulkarni, a native of India. The ballroom, which seats 1,000, is the first phase of a project he sees bringing together commerce and the arts. Construction is under way on a 900-seat concert hall-style theater, a jazz club, an art gallery, a fusion restaurant and a recording studio, all of which Kulkarni expects to open next year.
Kulkarni, 46, of Crystal Lake, was looking at building on a five-acre site near the AMC South Barrington 30 theater when in 2003 he had a chance to get the defunct Meadow Club -- a space that had housed 15 tennis courts, two swimming pools and a restaurant -- for a bargain price.
The private club once was one of the jewels of the Northwest suburbs, owned by Gould Corp., a conglomerate run decades ago by jet-setting CEO William Ylvisaker, famous for placing a Picasso sculpture "The Bather" in the office park.
Kulkarni threw an opening party for the first phase of the project Thursday, showing several hundred guests how the grand ballroom could be used for weddings, meetings and artistic events.
"We're extremely proud they chose Rolling Meadows," said Mayor Ken Nelson. "I just knew they could make this work."
Fran Bolson, director of the Woodfield Chicago Northwest Convention Bureau, called the facility "a nice addition to what's available. Banquet halls and facilities seem to be doing quite well."
As a venue for events, the Meadows Club will face competition from places like the new convention center in Schaumburg for meetings and the Metropolis in Arlington Heights for art events.
Can it attract enough patronage to succeed?
Kulkarni said the venue is larger than the Metropolis but smaller than convention centers in Schaumburg and Rosemont, giving it a distinct niche to reach.
In addition, Kulkarni expects the venue to attract ethnic weddings and other ethnic events, in part because of amenities such as tandoor ovens in the kitchen and a staff sensitive to such needs.
He said he anticipates holding Bollywood film festivals and world music concerts in the theater and bringing people together across cultural lines.
"Music and art and literature are global languages," he said. "It's bringing different cultures together. America is such a melting pot."