Posted: 9:30 a.m. Friday, May 6, 2016

Middletown pays $20K to buy back building it donated to company

By Mike Rutledge

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — 

City and elected officials have few details about why it cost $20,000 to buy back a building the city donated four years ago, but they remain confident that the structure can be a valuable asset in the future.

City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to pay $20,000 for the former Middletown Area Senior Citizens Center building at the southwest corner of Columbia Avenue and Verity Parkway. This is the same building the city it donated four years ago for use by Cincinnati State Technical & Community College, but the school does not have plans to use it.

Before the 5-0 vote, City Manager Doug Adkins said the $20,000 purchase price represents costs that Higher Education Partners, owners of the building, “have incurred to date in purchasing and carrying costs associated with the building, in lieu of putting it back out for sale.”

According to Journal-News articles, the city donated the building to Higher Education Partners in 2012. HEP signed a deal with the city to purchase the former CG&E building at 1 N. Main St. for $202,000 and accept a donation of the former senior center building.

Adkins clarified his comments Thursday to the Journal-News in an email, writing, “We donated the building but there were still legal costs, etc., associated with the transfer” in an email.

The $20,000 figure was provided by HEP to the city without detail, according to Adkins.

“They obviously had some utility, insurance costs, etc., over the past 3-4 years that I assume without knowing, went into that number.”

Asked whether the city had asked for an itemized list of those costs, he wrote: “No.”

“That was the price if we wanted the building back,” Adkins wrote in an email. “The detail wasn’t going to change the discussion or the decision.”

Officials from HEP on Thursday did not respond to a request for comment.

“Cincinnati State does not have have a future use for that building,” Adkins told members of council before their vote.

“It’s in our best interest to take that building back and protect that use,” he said.

The city approved the $20,000 purchase as an emergency measure — meaning consideration was needed at just one council meeting.

Because the city charter discourages use of one-meeting decisions — partly because they limit the opportunity for the public to comment on pending council decisions — at least four of council’s five members must be present at a meeting, and all present must vote to consider legislation on an emergency basis.

Asked why he recommended city council approve the legislation as an emergency measure, Adkins declined to give his reason.

“HEP stated why they intended to transfer the building now verbally and asked that we not share that information,” he wrote in an email to the Journal-News.

Council Member Steve Bohannon said Thursday he realized the city was buying a building it had donated to HEP, and did so without seeing a list of the costs the organization claimed it had paid.

“No, we have not seen any kind of an itemized list as to what the costs they have incurred over the last four years with the building,” he said.

“They just came to us and said, ‘We’ve got $20,000 tied up in it so far, and if you want it, if you’re willing to pay us back what we’ve got in it, then that’s what we’ll do for you,’ ” Bohannon said.

Before the vote, Council Member Talbott Moon asked Adkins whether he saw the building having value in the future, given recent interest in revitalizing the city’s downtown.

“I think you said it exactly right: It’s in the future,” Adkins answered. “That building does have some mechanical issues that we’re going to have to address, but there is room in that building, it’s got a fair amount of footprint.”

City offices could be put in the building, some of it could be rented out, “or we get a developer to use it for another purpose,” he said. “I think, yes, as time goes on it has more value.”

City officials have three options for the building, according to Adkins: sell it, either with or without a real-estate agent; “renovate it and use the space for city functions”; or “demolish and use it for green space or park space.”

Bohannon said he considered the transaction a good deal for Middletown: “It’s a good building in town, and it’s right where we want we want it to be, right next to our city building, so we can utilize it for things regarding the city. We can possibly make offices out of it and things like that, which would help us with our overcrowding we’ve got in the city building, so there’s a lot of different options we could go with. We could even put it out there for bid, and try to sell it to the general public.”

The council also approved six other other resolutions and ordinances Tuesday, each of them designated emergency legislation. Among them were:

·                       An ordinance for a $425,000 loan agreement with the Ohio Department of Transportation to build a two-lane access road from Union Road to the proposed AK Steel Research and Innovation Center and the paving of several roads;

·                       An ordinance allowing the city to spend $42,375 to rehabilitate production well No. 7, which in 1999 produced 4 million gallons per day but now provides about half that; and

·                       An ordinance that turns over to Butler County MetroParks its easement with the Miami Conservancy District, allowing the park system to assume control of Bicentennial Commons and the AK Pavilion.