Commissioners OK lease for Rec Center

4/30/2009

Lucas County commissioners have approved a new five-year lease with Toledo Volleyball Club Inc. for a hall at the Lucas County Recreation Center.

The agreement, for $1 a year, replaces a six-month agreement under which the club paid $40,000 a year, but the county paid for utilities and repairs. Michael Beazley, county administrator, said the club will pay for utilities and maintenance and make roof repairs as part of the new lease, and will handle rentals of the hall for other uses. The lease estimates the utilities at $60,000 a year. Included in the lease is the hall, the clubhouse, and a storage shed next to the hall.

"We got a lot of e-mails asking, 'Please don't close those rec halls,'•" county Commissioner Tina Skeldon Wozniak said. She said activity at the recreation halls is an economic-development engine for the county.

She said the club brings 350 children a year to play regularly in the facility, not including tournaments.

The commissioners stopped funding the exhibit halls as part of a 5.6 percent reduction in the 2009 budget to save $8.4 million. The exhibit halls, said to require $1 million in repairs, have hosted numerous activities such as hobby and craft shows and Children's Wonderland.

The county is still negotiating for a lease of hall No. 2.