Housing fell through. Now Tam O’Shanter is turning back to golf
A proposed revival of the shuttered Long Island club turns on a complicated inheritance: repeated redesigns, abandoned housing plans and a crucial zoning change.
Before considering what Tiger Woods might design at Tam O’Shanter, consider what never got built there. The 148-acre property in Brookville, on Long Island’s North Shore, was sold for residential development in 2019. According to GOLF.com’s November 2 report, those plans were abandoned after arsenic was discovered in the topsoil. Now the former club is being steered back towards golf, with Woods’s TGR Design appointed to reimagine its 18 holes.[1]
That makes this a land-reuse story before it is a celebrity-design story. Housing did not replace the course, but golf did not simply carry on either: Tam O’Shanter closed in 2021, and GOLF.com reports that no golf has been played there since. The proposed revival would return the property to its former use under a new owner and with a different collection of club facilities.[1]
A course repeatedly rewritten
There is no single untouched Tam O’Shanter layout awaiting rediscovery. The club opened in 1962 and was remodeled by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in 1968, just six years later. David Postlethwait redesigned it again in 1999. TGR’s appointment therefore adds another chapter to a property already shaped by successive architectural interventions. Describing the proposal as a return to golf is accurate; calling it a restoration would suggest an intention the reported plans do not establish.[1]
The enabling change came through local rules. Brookville amended its zoning code in 2025 to permit for-profit golf clubs, clearing a hurdle for the property’s return to operation. The Armchair Collective, a private golf club company seeking to build a national network of architecturally distinctive courses, acquired the site in September 2026 for an undisclosed sum. Its proposed private club gives the acreage a new commercial direction after the failed residential scheme.[1]
What must fit
The announced programme extends beyond the course: a clubhouse, member cottages, a golf performance centre and a 20,000-square-foot putting green inspired by the Himalayas at St Andrews. Those elements make the allocation of the 148 acres consequential. The design task encompasses both the playing layout and the space devoted to buildings, practice and putting. GOLF.com reported that clearing had begun, with course construction scheduled to start in spring 2027.[1]
The unresolved issue is how that programme meets the site’s environmental conditions: the report does not specify arsenic concentrations, remediation requirements or an agreed cleanup approach, and supplies no routing plan showing how the new course and facilities will occupy the property. The housing scheme’s collapse explains the opportunity for golf’s return; it does not establish that the underlying soil issue has been resolved.[1]
For now, the proposal’s distinctive feature is this reversal of direction. A course purchased for homes could become a course again, enabled by a zoning amendment and backed by a new club operator. Woods brings architectural attention, but the more consequential transformation is the attempt to give a shuttered, repeatedly redesigned property a workable next use.[1]
