Puttshack, opening at Skokie's Old Orchard mall, features high-tech mini-golf

Chicago Tribune

6 hours ago

A new 30,000-square-foot indoor mini-golf venue with food and drink is scheduled to open at Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie on June 20. The venue is also the final business put into place to occupy the square footage of the former Lord and Taylor store at the outdoor mall. The others are Zara, Arhaus and Pottery Barn.
The nine-hole mini-golf venue uses motion sensor technology to measure how many strokes a player takes to finish a course, among other tech infusions to the game of putt putt. The Skokie location has four courses, like most of Puttshack's locations, and offers 'challenge holes,' an additional mini-golf experience that uses virtual reality and is only in Skokie and Puttshack's suburban Dallas location.
Carlos Navarrete, Puttshack's director of operations, said the Skokie location is slightly larger than their Oakbrook location, which allowed it to have the challenge holes and also a layout that connects a rentable private room and bar to the courses.
'We have had technology that nobody (else) has,' Navarrete said of the technology that activates features on every hole in the course. 'And on top of that, the type of service, the type of cuisine, the type of drinks that we serve here, that's different.'
The Skokie location will have a wide variety of bar foods including skewers, quesabirria, bao buns and flatbreads. Each location of Puttshack also has regional differences to cater to each audience, according to Navarrete, and the Chicago edition of spring rolls, called 'tailpipes,' will be filled with Italian beef, giardiniera and cheese.
Puttshack's addition to the former Lord and Taylor site is part of the mall's redevelopment, planned for two phases. The first phase is anticipated to bring 600 apartments to the former site of Bloomingdale's and the current site of Forever 21 and Barnes and Noble, according to Westfield Old Orchard's General Manager Maegan Akers.
'We're very excited to finally have the last piece of the Lord and Taylor development, and I think it feeds nicely into our next phase of development with the residential coming up,' Akers said.
The Barnes and Noble and Forever 21 will relocate to the former Zara location, she said.
'We've started all the not fun behind-the-scenes utilities, designs, planning and all of that. All the fun stuff where we actually start taking down the building is happening early 2026,' Akers said.
Currently, Puttshack has a few locations at suburban malls that also have residential buildings, near Nashville and St. Louis, according to Navarrete.
'For us, it's creating a whole city, where you can get everything you need and in one space,' Akers said. In the next phase, a community green space is also envisioned to connect the residential area to the mall.