Deadline set for sale of golf course

The local port district set a formal deadline of Dec. 31 for the sale of Banks Lake Golf Course to Rattlesnake Ridge to be completed.

Grant County Port District 7, which manages the local airport and Banks Lake Golf Course, signed a purchase and sale agreement earlier this year to sell the golf course and some surrounding land to Rattlesnake Ridge for $1.8 million.

The company gave the district $10,000 in earnest money toward the sale.

District Commissioner and President Jim Keene said that he recently had told Scott Gerrits, the president of Rattlesnake Ridge, that the purchase needed to be completed before the end of the year, which Gerrits said would happen.

That was a verbal agreement, Keene explained at the district’s Nov. 21 board meeting, when they passed a formal deadline of Dec. 31, 2019 for the completion of the sale. The $10,000 in earnest money would be forfeited to the district after that point, when the district would be allowed to look at other potential deals with other buyers were the sale not completed by then.

Port District Commissioner Elect Scott Ross said that Gerrits still says he’s going to buy the course and hasn’t given the district reason to believe that he would not go through with the sale.