Girl Scouts Council approves buyer's offer for Camp Cherokee Ridge

The board of directors of Girl Scouts of the Missouri Heartland has accepted a buyer’s offer for the Camp Cherokee Ridge property despite efforts by some Scouts and adult leaders to stop the sale.

Some members, including adult leaders, had signed a petition seeking to remove the board and save the 1,100-acre Camp Cherokee Ridge in Wayne County and the 180-acre Camp Mintahama in Newton County.

Earlier this month, the board approved the sale of Camp Mintahama as well as a camp in Pettis County. Those two sales are expected to close by the first part of March.

The Cherokee Ridge sale is slated to close by early April, Girl Scouts of the Missouri Heartland (GSMH) spokeswoman Lori Enyart wrote Monday in a two-sentence, emailed news release.

No sale price was disclosed.

But Enyart wrote in a subsequent email that “upon completion of the sale, new ownership will become a matter of public record. As is standard practice in real estate transactions, until the sale is complete we will not release the name of the purchaser.”

The Cherokee Ridge property, which includes 21 cabins, a dining hall and a 20-acre lake, had a listed sale price of $1.85 million.

The petition drive to save the camps was organized by a group called BE FAIR, which stands for “Board of Equity, Fairness, Accountability, Inclusiveness and Reason.”

BE FAIR members started a Facebook page to voice concerns about GSMH CEO Anne Soots and the board of directors for the southern-Missouri council based in Springfield.

“Ms. Soots stated that the council is providing ‘the chance to practice a lifetime of leadership, adventure and success.’ We do not see these opportunities being offered in our area this year,” the BE FAIR group posted on its website.

Soots previously said the sale of the camps will allow GSMH to better fund recruitment and member-support activities.

But petition supporters asked on Facebook, “Why recruit more members with less activities, opportunities and lack of volunteer leaders?”

The Facebook message added, “Ms. Soots said that the council encourages open discussion and civil discourse. We would love that, but our letters and emails have gone unnoticed. Our requests have been ignored.”

mbliss@semissourian.com

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