Project Overview

IDLEWILD HOSPITALITY GROUP

THE PRAIRIE CLUB

Executive Summary

The Prairie Club is a luxury wellness retreat and private membership club set within 750 acres of restored tallgrass prairie, oak savanna, and glacial wetlands in Richmond, Illinois — 60 miles north of Chicago. The property sits at the heart of the Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge corridor, adjoining nearly 5,000 acres of contiguous protected landscape including Elizabeth Lake Nature Preserve and Glacial Park.

The project is built on four strategic pillars: health and wellness, sustainability and regenerative hospitality, experiential programming, and a mixed-use model integrating hotel, private club membership, and residential community. These pillars converge around a single guiding tenet: by doing good, we do well.

The development program encompasses guest lodging across The Homestead lodge, cottages, and farmhouse rentals; a full-service spa and wellness center; experiential programming spanning culinary, equestrian, agricultural, and outdoor adventure; a private membership club; meetings and event spaces; an outdoor Art Walk; and a residential community of estate lots integrated into the conservation landscape.

Success is measured in what we save as well as what we earn: restoration of native prairie supporting 200+ plant species, pollinator habitat creation serving threatened species, carbon sequestration, and strategic position within a federally protected conservation corridor creating nearly 5,000 acres of contiguous protected landscape.

The Opportunity

Luxury Hospitality Trends

The luxury hospitality sector is among the most resilient growth categories in the global travel economy. The U.S. luxury hotel market reached $77 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate above 6% through 2030, driven by rising demand among high-net-worth travelers, the ascendance of experiential travel, and the structural outperformance of the luxury tier versus all other hotel categories.

Premium wellness properties in the $1,000–$2,000+ ADR range demonstrate sustained demand and pricing power. The global wellness tourism market is approaching $1 trillion, growing at more than 9% annually. The United States leads globally in wellness tourism spending. Hospitality-branded residences have grown 230% over the past decade, with the majority of owners participating in rental pools which create a powerful adjacency between hotel operations and residential land value.

Drive-market wellness properties are thriving through repeatability. Membership models, seasonal programming rotations, and day-guest monetization create stable, recurring revenue streams that reduce dependence on long-haul travel demand. The demand for experiential travel through bespoke private membership clubs is a powerful global trend accelerating in 2026.

Strategic Implications for The Prairie Club

Four macro trends in hospitality converge directly on The Prairie Club's offering:

❖ Nature-based wellness as a core infrastructure. Leading consultancies report that nature-based wellness programming outperforms tech-heavy spa buildouts at a fraction of the capital cost, with higher guest satisfaction and compressed ROI timelines. The Prairie Club's 750 acres are the amenity.

❖ Regenerative hospitality as a competitive moat. The market is moving decisively beyond 'less harm' toward properties that actively restore ecosystems, strengthen local communities, and protect cultural heritage with measurable outcomes. Projects are now evaluated on biodiversity outcomes, community prosperity, and cultural continuity.

❖ Experiential programming as a revenue engine. The most successful properties treat programming — culinary storytelling, seasonal rituals, wellness immersions, art experiences — not as cost centers but as drivers of longer length-of-stay, premium pricing, repeat visitation, and membership revenue.

❖ Membership and drive-market strategy. With a population of ultra-high-net-worth individuals projected to grow 31% by 2030, these travelers increasingly prioritize privacy, wellness, and authentic experiential environments. The Prairie Club is positioned directly in this demand segment.

The Place

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" — Henry David Thoreau

The Prairie Club offers an opportunity to protect an ecosystem that once defined a continent. Its defining goal is not what we have built, but what we have saved.

Reclaiming America's Forgotten Wilderness

The tallgrass prairie once covered 170 million acres across the American heartland. Today, less than 4% remains which makes it more endangered than the Amazon rainforest. A single acre of healthy tallgrass prairie contains more plant species than most forests, supporting thousands of insects and the birds and mammals that depend on them. Less than 0.01% of Illinois' original tallgrass prairie survives. The Prairie Club sits at the boundary of what remains.

A Conservation Corridor of Unprecedented Scale

The Prairie Club's 750 acres of grasslands, woodlands, and wetlands are woven into a remarkable conservation story unfolding in Richmond, Illinois. To the north lies the Elizabeth Lake Nature Preserve, a 345-acre preserve identified by the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory as the highest quality lake ecosystem remaining in McHenry County. This diverse wetland harbors 29 species of native fish, over 200 plant species, 55 bird species, and 20 state threatened and endangered species.

One mile away lies Glacial Park, a 3,439-acre conservation area harboring 40 endangered and threatened species and ranked among the top five areas to view migratory wetland birds in the entire region.

Together, these properties lie within the boundaries of the Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge, the first federal wildlife refuge within 100 miles of Chicago. When fully realized, the refuge will encompass 11,200 acres of protected glacial landscape, creating a 'cores and corridors' model focused on habitat for migratory and grassland birds. Recent acquisitions have created contiguous conservation areas totaling 5,600 acres, with The Prairie Club positioned as a vital piece of this expanding mosaic.

The Prairie Club doesn't stand alone. It stands as part of a federally protected corridor where prairie restoration, wildlife movement, and watershed health function as nature intended. Active regenerative land management is conducted in partnership with Openlands — Chicago's leading land trust, with over 60 years of ecological restoration experience and 2,000+ acres acquired within Hackmatack alone. This is conservation at scale, where exceptional guest experience generates exceptional ecological outcomes, strengthening both financial performance and environmental impact.

Design Intent

Our design approach seeks to be light on the land, with architecture as minimal a disturbance on the landscape as possible. Each building's site and orientation will be informed by existing trees, topographical formations, and the natural drainage patterns that have shaped this glacial terrain for millennia. Buildings will frame and reveal the untouched beauty of this place, uniting visitors with nature in a series of public and private moments.

Olson Kundig, the Seattle-based architecture firm known for the Olympic Sculpture Park, Teton Heritage Museum, and Smoke Farm, has completed master planning and schematic design. Their approach centers the building program around the landscape rather than imposing upon it.

The Homestead lodge is intentionally modest above grade, with a substantial lower-level program, keeping the building embedded in the land rather than announcing itself across it. Campus organization allows buildings to share resources and conserve energy through on-site infrastructure including geothermal loops. Our goal is a development that not only inhabits the land responsibly but actively contributes to its restoration.

Program Vision

The campus Master Plan disperses program elements across the property, with each building's placement informed by existing topography, vegetation, and views. This distributed approach ensures minimal disruption of the landscape while capturing optimal solar angles and creating intimate moments of discovery throughout the property.

Phase 1 delivers a fully operational luxury resort at opening with the infrastructure and amenity program to support residential sales, club membership, and rental pool participation. Program elements include:

❖ Guest accommodations: The Homestead lodge with 22 hotel keys across standard rooms, suites, and corner suites; 30 Phase 1 guest cabins; and a farmhouse rental program.

❖ Spa & Wellness Pavilion: A full wellness program including treatment rooms, fitness, lockers, hydrotherapy circuit, wet therapy, and outdoor pool.

❖ The Event Barn: An 8,000 SF primary event venue with 400-person capacity, full F&B service, AV, and covered terrace.

❖ Private Club Membership: A founding member club program integrating access across resort amenities.

❖ Residential Community: 50 estate home sites with resort amenity access, rental pool participation, and a working kitchen farm and greenhouse.

❖ Art Walk: A 750-acre curated trail network weaving permanent and rotating art installations through conservation land.

❖ Farm & Gardens: 12 acres of working kitchen farm, greenhouse, and orchard supplying the F&B program and supporting guest-facing harvest experiences.

The Health & Wellness Spa

The Prairie Club's spa program is designed to celebrate the unique character of the Midwest through local materials, seasonal experiences, and prairie-inspired aesthetics while incorporating comprehensive wellness programming.

Key spa amenities include a comprehensive thermal circuit with distinct experiences, private treatment rooms and specialized therapy spaces, four-season architecture celebrating the prairie climate and sustainable biophilic design. The spa design offers guest an intimate scale ensuring personalized service that prioritizes the quality of each guest's experience over throughput.

Wellness Services

Traditional offerings include Swedish, deep tissue, hot stone, prenatal, and specialty massage; reflexology; European facials; body wraps and scrubs; acupuncture; and energy healing. Advanced modalities include cryotherapy, IV vitamin therapy, flotation, sound healing, and guided breathwork, reflecting the longevity science trend that is reshaping the wellness economy.

Signature and immersive experiences range from multi-day wellness immersions (three-day, five-day, and seven-day programs) to prairie-specific regional treatments including the Corn Silk and Oat Body Therapy and the Mineral Therapy Suite, grounding the wellness experience in the specificity of this place.

Facility Design

The spa arrival experience centers on a glass atrium with living walls of native Midwest plants, a limestone fireplace, and a wellness tea bar with prairie views. The treatment wing includes private treatment rooms, couples suites, and VIP spa suites with private hydrotherapy tubs and outdoor terraces.

Specialized therapy spaces include a Himalayan Salt Cave, cryotherapy suite, flotation therapy suite, sound healing sanctuary, acupuncture suite, and IV therapy lounge. The indoor thermal circuit features eight distinct experiences, from mineral hot springs and cold plunge to Finnish sauna, infrared sauna, Himalayan salt sauna, and a themed experience shower gallery.

The outdoor hydrotherapy program includes a year-round heated infinity pool overlooking the lake, a sheltered lake-view hot tub and seasonal outdoor cold plunge in natural stone.

Sustainability Integration

The spa leverages campus-wide sustainability infrastructure: geothermal heating and cooling, solar hot water pre-heating and high-efficiency pool systems. Water conservation features rainwater harvesting, low-flow fixtures, greywater recycling, and advanced pool filtration.

Material selection prioritizes reclaimed materials, low-VOC finishes, natural fiber textiles, and locally sourced materials.

Activities & Experiences

The Prairie Club's experiential programming portfolio is treated not as a cost center but as a core revenue driver supporting longer length-of-stay, premium pricing, repeat visitation, and membership engagement. Programming is organized around six categories.

Wellness & Fitness

Mindfulness and movement programming spans guided meditation, forest bathing, sound bathing, crystal Reiki, chakra balancing, and pranayama breathwork. Yoga programming includes restorative, hot flow, aerial, ropes wall, candlelight, and sunrise yoga across indoor studios and outdoor settings. Fitness classes range from HIIT and Pilates to sculpt, outdoor bootcamp, and spin.

Outdoor Adventure

The equestrian program will be conducted in partnership with local facilities within ten minutes of the resort, which will include trail rides, natural horsemanship experiences, full-day clinics, wilderness rides, and carriage rides. Water programming draws on the property's natural features and the 10-acre lake house on Lake Elizabeth: swimming, kayaking, canoeing, paddleboarding, and trophy pond fishing. A dedicated fly fishing school adds casting and tying programs for skill-building repeat visits. The adventure portfolio further includes guided hiking, cycling, adventure archery, sporting clays, aerial ropes courses, and navigation courses.

Culinary & Beverage

The culinary program transforms farm-to-table philosophy into interactive guest experience: cooking demonstrations, a learning kitchen, mixology classes, farmstead tasting tours, and wine, whiskey, and Scotch programs. Chef-curated picnics, cheese tastings, and nutrition classes round out an offering that functions as both a revenue driver and a central element of the experiential narrative.

Farm Experiences

The working farm creates authentic agrarian experiences: visits with alpaca, sheep, goats, chickens, miniature horses, and pigs; egg gathering; garden tours; and dairy barn visits. These connect guests to the agricultural heritage of northern Illinois while reinforcing the conservation and sustainability narrative.

Art Studio & Creative Programming

Art studio programming includes ceramics, pottery, tile making, watercolor, sketching, and basket weaving — intimate, hands-on experiences that complement the Art Walk and support the itinerary-as-therapy model.

Family & Youth Programming

Camp Idlewild provides structured programming for younger guests organized around daily themes: stream exploration, prairie wildlife, ceramics, jewelry making, navigation, canoeing, garden discovery, and culinary and farm animal days. Multigenerational programming creates a compelling reason for families to choose The Prairie Club as their wellness destination. Doggy Day Camp programming will also be available, ensuring that pets can also enjoy The Prairie Club experience.

The Art Walk

The Prairie Club's Art Walk creates a powerful synergy between cultural enrichment, the wellness experience and the natural environment. Sculptures integrated into the landscape enhance the therapeutic benefits of nature immersion while providing contemplative focal points that offer moments for mindfulness practice. This combination appeals to affluent wellness travelers seeking transformative experiences beyond traditional spa offerings.

Thoughtfully curated outdoor sculpture strengthens our conservation narrative by featuring works made from sustainable materials, celebrating natural forms, and embodying environmental themes. Site-specific installations that work harmoniously with existing topography minimize disruption while creating educational opportunities about land stewardship and artistic sustainability.

The Art Walk transforms passive property touring into active cultural engagement and discovery. Installations serve multiple functions: wayfinding elements, gathering spaces for outdoor programming, and moments that deepen the marketing reach of the property across seasons. Guests who come for wellness will return for the art. The model draws on established precedents, such as Storm King Art Center (500 acres, New York), LongHouse Reserve (East Hampton), Yorkshire Sculpture Park (England), and the Olympic Sculpture Park (Seattle), each demonstrating that curated outdoor art combined with exceptional natural landscape creates a destination genuinely difficult to replicate.

Art ownership will employ a hybrid strategy: a core permanent collection of commissioned site-specific works as anchors, supplemented by rotating loan positions that maintain programmatic novelty. The Art Walk is also designed as a platform for strategic corporate and philanthropic partnership, with potential sponsors and foundations whose conservation and wellness missions align directly with The Prairie Club's positioning.

Investment Overview

Over the past 3 years, Idlewild Hospitality Group has been actively acquiring land in Richmond, IL which comprise the core property asset of The Prairie Club. With over 600 acres held under South of the Border Holdings LLC, and another 140 acres held under Lakeview Reserve LLC, The Prairie Club has curated the assembly of a truly unique property to be mindfully developed in several phases.

The first phase of the project design is to establish the Master Plan, a comprehensive land-use and development framework for the entire property. The Master Plan establishes the project's vision and translates it into a spatial program, including the placement and phasing of all major components (resort lodge, cabins, spa, food and beverage venues, residential parcels, conservation corridors, and supporting infrastructure), the circulation and road network, utility and civil infrastructure strategy, and the relationship between developed areas and preserved open space. It also defines the design language, density, and overall site organization that govern how the property will be built out across phases. The Master Plan answers what gets built, where structures are situated, in what sequence and scale, and serves as the controlling document that all subsequent design work must conform to.

The Master Plan for The Prairie Club was created by Hart Howerton, one of the most respected resort and residential architectural firms in the U.S.

Upon completion of the Master Plan, Idlewild engaged the internationally acclaimed architectural firm Olson Kundig as the Design Architects and Architects of Record (“AOR”) for the next phase of work through completion. Schematic Design is the first phase of architectural design, taking the individual buildings and components identified in the Master Plan and developing them into defined concepts. At this stage the architect establishes each structure's footprint, massing, floor plans, key sections and elevations, square footages, materials direction, and relationship to the site. Schematic Design produces drawings and documentation detailed enough to confirm that the program fits the site, to support meaningful cost estimating, and to align stakeholders before the heavier investment of design development and construction documentation. It converts the Master Plan's high-level intent into building-specific design that can be priced, value-engineered, and budgeted.

Cumming Group serves as Owner's Representative, managing cost estimating, consultant coordination, and construction oversight. The project has completed a rigorous value engineering process and established a consolidated Phase 1 budget. Key construction and financial parameters are subject to final validation by the project's architect, cost manager, and civil and MEP engineers, a process currently underway.

Six Revenue Streams

The Prairie Club generates revenue through six distinct, mutually reinforcing revenue streams:

❖ Hotel Operations. Room revenue from the Homestead lodge, guest cabins, and condo rental pool participants; F&B; spa and wellness programming; and ancillary resort revenue.

❖ Event Revenue. The Event Barn (400-person capacity) operates at targeted event frequency annually, with a second event venue opening in Year 3.

❖ Club Membership.

❖ Residential Lot Sales. Fifty estate home sites sold over Years 1-7 at pricing supported by the Olson Kundig design, resort amenities, and conservation landscape.

❖ Construction Development Fees. TPC earns a development management fee on homeowner construction with no balance sheet exposure.

❖ Rental Pool Participation. Homeowners who join the operator-managed rental program contribute additional inventory and revenue, with TPC retaining a share of gross rental revenue.

Phasing Strategy

The Prairie Club has been strategically designed to be scalable in phases over. Phase 1 capital funds the full infrastructure platform: the main lodge (“The Homestead”), 40 cabins and cottages, the spa, the event venue, pedestrian bridge, civil infrastructure, landscaping and ecology program and The Farm, as well as several multi-use amenity spaces. Phases 2 and 3 expand the cabin count and event capacity from operating cash flow and revenue generated from the sale of home lots and supplemental debt.

Conservation as Competitive Moat

Federal adjacency to the Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge is a significant strategic advantage of the property that would be hard to replicate. The site's ecological identity is central to the project’s positioning, its residential land values, and its long-term brand differentiation from other wellness resorts.

THE PRAIRIE CLUB

Idlewild Hospitality Group