Port Authority agrees to $8.7 million buyout of BAX Global lease
9/22/2011The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority board of directors has approved an $8.7 million buyout of BAX Global’s lease at Toledo Express Airport that will allow the port authority to begin marketing the vacated cargo-hub facility there immediately instead of two years from now.
Opie Rollison, the port board’s chairman, said the $8.7 million BAX will pay the Port Authority is more than the company would have paid in rent, bond payments, and taxes on the hub facility over the two years had the lease run through to expiration.
BAX will be allowed to use office space at the hub through March at no additional charge. The air-freight company also will be paid back $260,000 it had advanced to the port authority for hub facility improvements that it and the agency had negotiated but were not built before BAX decided to shut down its Toledo hub operation.
The Sept. 1 shutdown eliminated about 700 jobs, mostly part-time cargo handlers, at the cargo hub.
The port board’s vote to approve the buyout was 11-0, with members Brian Bucher and Lloyd Jacobs absent.
The board also unanimously approved a three-year, month-to-month lease with DHL Worldwide, Inc., to occupy part of the Air Cargo Building at Toledo Express for truck-plane cargo storage and transfer.
The DHL freight will be international cargo transferred from overseas flights at Cincinnati to an air route serving Toledo and Minneapolis-St. Paul, with goods handled in Toledo being trucked to or from Detroit or Grand Rapids, Mich. DHL had contracted with BAX to transfer such freight on its behalf before the hub shutdown.