Welcome Back, Tripoli Country Club!

Fairway wood positioned near golf ball. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wkulicki/4010582747/, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It appears the board of directors of the University Club, a 150-acre golf course in Brown Deer, plan to revert its name to “Tripoli Country Club” as it had been known from 1921 until 2016.

Records filed with the State of Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions indicate that, effective May 31st, the University Club name will fade from the records, where it has been lodged since 1898. The organization will now adopt the corporate style of “Tripoli Country Club, Inc.”

The registered agent of the non-stock corporation, Jeff Podbielski, serves as the Controller and Human Resources manager of the club, 7401 N. 43rd St..

I sent a message to the club on May 23, but have not received a response.

Name Never Caught On

In 2016, the financially distressed Tripoli Country Club decided to merge with the downtown University Club and thereupon took the name of that institution, which was never known for any sporting activities save for a couple of bowling lanes in the basement that were out of favor by the days of the Hoover administration. Then, when the club closed its doors at 925 E. Wells St. in December 2023, the storied name lived on in a place that had long borne a better one.

I heard from a number of members and former members at the time, that they mourned the loss of the Tripoli name, but the University Club had the upper hand.

Management of the club wrote a letter to members in December 2023:

Though leadership of both clubs believed that the array of amenities offered by the combined club would positively drive member retention and recruitment, the cultural and operational synergies we hoped for were never realized.

Although the synergies did not turn out to exist, the new management did appear to revive the country club. In 2015, pre-merger, the golf course had assets of $4.9 million, liabilities of $4.6 million, and $4.15 million in revenue.

From March 2023 to February 2024, the most recent figure available and which includes the downtown club, the club reported $9 million in revenue, assets of $11.8 million, liabilities of $9.4 million and net assets of $2.31 million, up from $277,000 in 2015.

As I noted in an article in 2023 announcing the closure of the downtown club:

Some years ago a windmill was added to the University Club logo, perhaps a forecast of which way the winds were blowing. Non-golf membership at the club dropped from 500 to 220, while office culture changed post-Covid; appeals for leading fundraising gifts from members were not successful — and the Millennials who were driving the growth of Downtown turned out to not be the joiners of generations past. I doubt many of them are toting golf clubs from their Third Ward condos to the links in Brown Deer, for that matter. The culture clash between suburbia and urban Milwaukee continues.

Let’s Not Forget Brynwood Country Club

The downtown Wisconsin Club also got married to a country club in 2009 when it took over Brynwood Country Club, since 1928 located west of Tripoli at 6200 W. Good Hope Rd. in the city of Milwaukee. It was given the astoundingly complicated name of “Wisconsin Club Country Club.”

In June 2023, this partnership also failed. Club members voted 97% in favor of selling the club to Concert Golf Partners, which, since 2011, has purchased some 35 golf courses. The new owners promptly renamed it “The Wisconsin Country Club.” It looks like Brynwood, unlike Tripoli, will not be coming back.