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The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is close to ending an impasse with the city’s Goldfields Golf Club over licence fees the Club has withheld from the Council for the past three years.

The fees have been kept in trust by the Club since the Council failed to build a permanent clubhouse at the $18.5 million Kalgoorlie Golf Course by 1st January 2015, the deadline outlined in contracts originally signed as part of the New Golf Club Agreement in 2004.

According to a report in The West Australian, Council documents suggests that amount held in trust totalled $316,000 at the end of 2015, and it is understood to have risen since.

Since the course opened in 2010, the Club’s 430-odd members have been based in a modular building.

However, City Chief Executive John Walker told The West Australian that a deal has now been struck to release some of the funds, two years after the council threatened legal action to recover the fees.

Walked advised that once the agreement is finalised, a first-up payment of $350,000 from the trust will be made to the Council, advising “that agreement is in place, we’re just checking the numbers and doing a final audit of that.

“Then a lot of the funds will be passed across, which is really pleasing.

“We’ve also agreed that we’ll sit down as a council and a club to work through some of the terms and conditions we think are onerous and don’t allow for non-members to play, particularly in prime time.”

The eventual construction of the long-promised clubhouse appears to be drawing closer after the Council unanimously voted at a meeting on Monday night (9th April) to pursue a lease agreement with a private developer, which plans to construct a multimillion-dollar resort and clubhouse on the site of the Club.

The deal will see the Council provide $4 million in funding and a proposed $3 million commercial loan for the project.

Goldfields Golf Club President Graeme Wilmot confirmed a verbal agreement had been made with the council over the licence fees, and said the club had been negotiating “in good faith” and had already handed over $100,000 in 2016 when discussions began.

Wilmot added “when the agreement was first written up it was a very different economic situation for the City and the State, now it’s challenging times for them and there’s no benefit to anyone by us being difficult and staying at an impasse.

“We want to get this resolved and a clubhouse built. It’s as close as I’ve felt in all the years I’ve been involved.”

The Graham Marsh-designed course is ranked among the best public courses in Australia and hosts the WA PGA Championship every year, but runs at an annual loss of about $1 million.

Image: Goldfields Golf Club.

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