Bonds for new UT housing approved
Port board OKs $45M package
3/28/2014Bond financing for new student housing at the University of Toledo was approved Thursday morning by the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority board of directors.
The $45 million package, a combination of tax-exempt and taxable revenue bonds, will finance a loan to CHF-Toledo, LLC, which is an operating unit of the Collegiate Housing Foundation, a nonprofit corporation in Alabama.
CHF-Toledo plans to develop a 492-bed dormitory at 2125 Campus Rd. on UT main-campus land that would be leased from the university.
John Szuch, chairman of the port board’s finance committee, said the bonds will be “a pass-through transaction” with no liability to the port authority.
The agency will collect a fee of one-eighth of one percent when the bonds are issued as well as “a relatively small annual fee” for its oversight.
Mr. Szuch, however, then abstained from the vote, along with Sharon Speyer and UT President Dr. Lloyd Jacobs, citing a potential conflict of interest.
The bond-issuance resolution passed 8-0, with the three abstentions and board members Jerry Chabler and Andrea Price absent.
No construction schedule was discussed at the meeting.
Also during its meeting, the port board awarded a $205,500 contract to Midwest Contracting Inc., of Holland to replace doors at Toledo Express Airport’s passenger terminal.
The terminal’s sliding doors are more than 20 years old, require “constant maintenance, and have exceeded their useful life,” according to a port authority staff report.
The board approved a $255,000 appropriation for the door replacements, including money for project management and a 10 percent contingency fund.
All but $20,000 of the project is refundable from the airport’s Passenger Facility Charge, a local tax on airline tickets.
Holly Kemler, the port authority's spokesman, said after the meeting that three automatic sliding doors will be replaced in kind, a revolving door will also be replaced with an automatic sliding door, and one manual door at the terminal's west end will be replaced with a manual door.
The new doors will have better insulation than the ones they will replace, she said, and should be installed by early summer.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.