Brooks Golf will remain a golf course

Brooks Golf will remain a golf course.

The Dickinson County Conservation Board voted to keep Brooks Golf as a golf course and to send out a request for proposals to lease the course to a management company beginning in 2020. The current lease contract with Brooks Management LLC runs through 2019.

Dickinson County Conservation Board took ownership of Brooks Golf in March when an anonymous donation of $3 million was given to the Conservation Foundation of Dickinson County — the non-profit fundraising arm for the conservation board — to purchase the course. The CFDC then gave possession of the 230 acres, including the pro shop, clubhouse restaurant and maintenance structures to the conservation board. Minerva’s Restaurant, Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center and the Highway 71 frontage are separate and were not included in the transaction.

Part of the donation agreement was to place a conservation easement on the land to protect it from development in perpetuity, and the Dickinson County Conservation Board is working with the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation on this easement, to be in place by November.

The terms of the lease in the request for proposals will be finalized this month, and the conservation board will also discuss the length of the lease and the number of holes.

Once the request for proposals are received later this year, the conservation board will use a point system to rank them and will establish a contract with a management company by the end of 2019 with terms to begin in 2020.

More information will be released to the public as decisions are finalized. Please keep up on the latest at on our website.