Offer to buy Sun Dance Golf Course retracted

The deal is off: Sun Dance Golf Course is no longer for sale. It’ll offer golf as usual in the foreseeable future.

Sun Dance “will operate as an 18-hole golf course and restaurant indefinitely” with longtime owner Peggy Jones calling the shots, according to a statement posted on the Sun Dance Web site ( www.sundancegc.com) last week.

Golf course regulars say they’re elated by the news. Sun Dance, they say, is one of only a few affordable courses within a 15-minute drive from northwest Spokane.

“It’s an extremely friendly atmosphere and the people who play there are a great bunch of people,” said 90-year-old George Clough, who was among the first golfers to play the 6,257-yard, par 70 course on opening day in 1963. He loves it so much he volunteers as a weekend marshal at the course during the season.

Jones, who along with her four children has owned the course since 1977, announced last summer that a sale on the property was pending. Jones had said Sun Dance could no longer compete financially with the seven public golf courses, variously run by the city of Spokane and Spokane County.

But potential buyers Ron and Jill McIntire, owners of the sell-it-yourself real estate Web site Spokanebyowner.com, retracted their offer to buy the place on Dec. 20, it says on the golf course Web site.

In 2007, the course will be run by a new general manager and director of golf operations, hopes to lease its restaurant to the Liberty Lake- owners of Palenque Mexican restaurant and plans to open its driving range, weather permitting, on January 3.