Published October 12, 2026 · Updated October 28, 2026
The Watertown Planning Commission voted 5-0 against rezoning the Ives Hill Country Club clubhouse from residential to neighborhood mixed use. The proposal would carve the clubhouse off from the golf course and rezone it — and under the new zoning, a future owner could put a gas station or a car wash on the site.
Developer Jake Johnson says that’s not the plan. He’s offered to support a deed restriction limiting the property to a restaurant or office building. Sounds reasonable. The commission didn’t buy it — unanimously.
They’re right to be skeptical, and the reason is the oldest lesson in land use: don’t read the promise, read the code. A developer’s assurance covers today. Zoning covers every tomorrow after the property changes hands, the market shifts, or the restriction gets challenged, renegotiated, or simply outlived. The commission wasn’t voting on Jake Johnson’s intentions. It was voting on what the zoning would permit for the next owner, and the one after that.
Here’s the irony: deed restrictions are already the load-bearing instrument in the entire Ives Hill saga. When the city bought the Thompson Park golf course for $3.4 million, P.J. Simao was paid $850,000 for a deed restriction keeping Ives Hill a nine-hole course (Club + Resort Business). Johnson — a local landscaper who bought the course from Simao — has been working within that restriction ever since, fixing up greens and bunkers and reopening the restaurant (currently Bad Apple Social). Now the clubhouse needs its own restriction to make the rezoning palatable. At some point you have to ask: if the protection requires a custom legal instrument every time, maybe the zoning itself is telling you something.
None of this is an accusation against Johnson. By all accounts he’s invested real money and effort into the property, and a restaurant or office at the clubhouse is a perfectly sensible use. The commission’s vote isn’t about him — it’s about the principle that zoning decisions outlive the people who request them. That’s literally the commission’s job: to think past the applicant standing in front of them.
What happens next: the commission’s vote is advisory. The final call belongs to the Watertown City Council. On Monday, October 19, 2026, the council introduced the request as Ordinance No. 1 — covering a 1.7-acre section of 465 Flower Avenue West (Parcel 14-42-101.000, the clubhouse parcel) to be rezoned from Residential to Neighborhood Mixed Use — and voted unanimously to schedule the required public hearing for 7:15 p.m. on Monday, November 2, 2026. There was no final vote on October 19, because the council must hold that hearing before voting. The SEQRA (state environmental review) resolution is also to be taken up at the November 2 meeting. If the rezoning passes, the parcel would be subdivided so the restaurant can continue as a principal use. No new construction or expansion is proposed in the packet, and subdivision and Special Use Permit review would still follow separately.
This is the kind of small-city story that deserves watching, because the pattern repeats: a reasonable proposal, a reasonable promise, and a code that permits something nobody in the room actually wants. The council’s job now is the same as the commission’s was — decide based on what the zoning allows, not what anyone says they’ll do with it.
Update — October 28, 2026: The request has been withdrawn
Ives Hill owner Jake Johnson has withdrawn the rezoning request, as reported October 27 by the Watertown Post. Johnson cited new financial support from neighbors, members, and friends, and said the property will remain dedicated to its existing operations — no subdivision and no commercial rezoning for now. Shannon Exford will run the restaurant and golf operations for the 2027 season.
The withdrawal takes the question away from the City Council, which had scheduled a public hearing on the ordinance for November 2. The argument of this piece stands as written — it was always about what the code would have allowed, not about Johnson’s intentions — but readers deserve the ending: the course and clubhouse stay as they are, under the zoning they already have.