When Luxe Golf Bays will open, plus new details about what to expect from the massive indoor golf facility

An official tee time has been set for the Luxe Golf Bays development at Ballpark Commons in Franklin. The three-level, high-end driving range center that will feature 57 temperature-controlled, open-air golf bays overlooking 250 yards of turf is set to open Aug. 12.

The facility is being built adjacent to Franklin Field, home of the Milwaukee Milkmen of the American Association of Professional Baseball and the UW-Milwaukee baseball team.

Construction on the $27 million facility, which will also feature two restaurants, a year-round brew pub called Hinterhof and a 200-person capacity event space, began in January after years of planning and a delay tied to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each golf bay is a fully furnished private suite complete with big-screen televisions. Ballpark Commons’ technology partners, Trackman Range and Flite Golf, are equipping Luxe with a technology and gaming platform that features Doppler radar ball tracking. Players take aim at color-coded targets and are digitally scored based on how near to the target they can land a microchipped range ball.

Fans pouring into Franklin Field for Milkmen games over the weekend paused to gawk at the impressive project as it nears completion. A series of large targets with a bright red center cover an artificial turf surface that’s enclosed on both sides by netting draped from towering metal poles.

Luxe Golf Bays is the latest project at the sprawling Ballpark Commons, a mixed-used district owned by Mike Zimmerman that includes Franklin Field, several other baseball diamonds, the Umbrella Bar, Milky Way Drive-In, Midwest Orthopedic Specialty Hospital Performance Center, Briscoe Family YMCA Wellness Center and an office and retail building anchored by Wheel & Sprocket, Blend Coffee & Cocktails and the headquarters of ROC Ventures, the group that manages Ballpark Commons, the Rock Sports complex and owns the Milwaukee Milkmen and the Milwaukee Wave, among other entities.

Zimmerman also recently announced plans for a baseball-themed boutique hotel on the property and an apartment development.

Luxe Golf is a home-grown imitator of wildly popular Topgolf, which got its start in England more than two decades ago and has grown into a global sports and entertainment company now based in Dallas that provides technology-enabled golf entertainment experiences in more than 70 locations in the United States, including two in suburban Chicago but none in Wisconsin at this point.

In a few weeks, golf fanatics will no longer have to trek out of state for the experience.

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