Neighbors of Orchards Executive Golf Course offered to pay $280,000 in extra taxes to help the city buy the 30-acre property on Lawrence’s fast-growing west side.

“We’ve been working on this for almost three years,” said Jean Milstead, a neighbor and interim president of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve really tried hard to work out a situation where everybody could win-win.”

For three years, Orchards’ owner Ed White has said he couldn’t compete with the city’s Eagle Bend Golf Course and has offered the course for sale. Among the interested are those who would convert the property into a residential development.

Neighbors and city officials have opposed such development, saying they didn’t want to lose the green space and were worried flooding problems would result.

“I think there’s a clear community benefit to preserving this big chunk of land as green space,” Mayor Sue Hack said Friday.

In May, the city offered $670,000 for the course at 3000 W. 15th St. White rejected the offer as “considerably less” than the $750,000 he paid a decade earlier. Milstead said White had made a counteroffer of $950,000 and the city balked.

Now the 54 neighbors surrounding Orchards are asking the city to create a benefit district that would tax them the $280,000 difference between what White wants and what the city’s willing to pay.

White said Friday that he hadn’t heard of the proposal but was intrigued.

“It would certainly go a long ways” to resolving the impasse, he said. “I’m definitely interested, without a doubt.”

The property has a stream running through it but doesn’t appear on Federal Emergency Management Agency maps of the 100-year floodplain. Officials said that was because FEMA didn’t map smaller streams — not because the property wasn’t flood-prone.

“If it’s developed, we don’t know what would happen to the flooding,” Milstead said. “It doesn’t take much rain for that creek to overflow onto the fairway.”

The neighbors’ offer is conditioned upon a city promise to keep Orchards dedicated as an open space. City officials have said they probably would keep the nine-hole golf course open for business, in addition to 18-hole Eagle Bend.

“I think it provides recreational facilities for this community,” Hack said.

“It would only need minor changes to be profitable,” Milstead said.

The Lawrence City Commission will discuss the proposal at its next meeting, 6:35 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts street.