The Effingham Park District Board heard from the current owners of the Evergreen Mini Golf Course, Julie and Mark Pike, Wednesday night at their board meeting. The Pikes’ mini golf course is on a piece of property, located at 1202 N. Maple Street, that is owned by the Effingham Park District. However, the Park Board has expressed that they are not interested in renewing a 10-year lease allowing use of the property to the Pikes.
“We are not interested in a longer-term lease at this point,” said Park Board President David McDevitt. “That was the only option presented to us and we didn’t want to do it. As I had said, we don’t know exactly what we are going to do [with the property], but there are several possibilities in the discussion phase. We didn’t want to tie our hands for another ten years.”
The lease expires on December 10th of this year and McDevitt said that the district would be “reasonable” with the Pikes on them returning the property back to its original state as per the lease. Effingham Park District Director Jeff Althoff reiterated that because the district had numerous potential ideas for the property, they did not want to be in a new 10-year agreement with the Pikes. McDevitt did say that the board would “consider” a different proposal from the Pikes for use of the property, but made no commitments.
McDevitt also said that he regreted the way the situation had played out when the only stance that the Board had on the issue was that they were not interested in another long term lease.