Here’s a somewhat peculiar side effect of the local building boom: Centre Region Parks and Recreation will be moving to a new office space.
The Centre Region Council of Governments General Forum approved on Monday a seven-year lease agreement for commercial office space at 2040 Sandy Drive, suites A and B, to serve as Parks and Rec’s offices.
So what does that have to do with all the new construction? CRPR’s move frees up much-needed space in COG’s Gateway Drive building for the Centre Region Code Administration, which has increased staff to keep up with new construction and in the process outgrown its own office space.
In the last year alone, the region saw more than $250 million in new construction and there’s been more than $1 billion in building in the past four years. With planned new housing developments and major mixed-use projects across the six-municipality Centre Region and other municipalities that utilize Code Administration services, the need for inspections and permitting shows no signs of slowing down. And the COG building is now squeezed for space, with narrow offices created under staircases and a lack of sufficient parking and storage.
COG Executive Director Jim Steff said that it made more sense financially for Parks and Rec to move to new offices. Had Code Administration moved it would have freed up more space than needed in the COG building. Four COG agencies lease the building from the Centre Region municipalities in a condominium-style arrangement and moving Code Administration would have essentially left the municipalities to pay for unused space.
Base rent on CRPR’s new 3,877-square foot office space will be $67,848 per year. However, the property owner will make $53,280 in requested renovations that will be built into the life of the lease. That, along with taxes, insurance and common area maintenance will bring the yearly rent to $83,624, which is about $40,000 more than what CRPR pays in rent at the COG building.
The lease also has a five-year buyout and a three-year extension option.
State College Borough Councilwoman Theresa Lafer said she believes the rent on the Sandy Drive suites is high. She added that while she understands the need for space, and that the current rate of rapid growth was not expected even a decade ago, she is concerned about, ‘exponential growth and exponential cost, and no increase in income.’
‘I’m really concerned, because I see this as an example once again of major growth for COG and our services and no way to truly cover them,’ Lafer said. She also asked whether staff and the Ad Hoc Facilities Committee looked at other properties that weren’t as nice, but were functional and at a lower cost.
Steff said they did look at other properties and based on facility needs the Sandy Drive location is a competitive rate and a fair lease.
‘We’ve looked at alternatives from a number of different perspectives and this is a good one,’ Steff said. ‘This is an expensive place to do business. Among the options this is far less than adding on to [the COG] building. There’s not room to renovate.’
He later added that CRPR manages 54 parks and more than 1,000 acres and that while the individual municipalities may not be large urban areas, taken together they are akin to a city the size of Allentown.
‘We are at a transformative period in time right now,’ Steff said. ‘We’re moving toward a completely different scale of operation and there’s a cost to adapt to that change.’
Steff and several General Forum members said leasing office space is ‘an interim fix,’ and the ultimate solution is for a combined CRPR maintenance and administration building owned by the municipalities. CRPR has a separate maintenance building with rent of about $55,000 per year.
It will take years and a few million dollars for a new CRPR building, however, and right now the COG agencies have simply run out of space.
Harris Township Supervisor and Ad Hoc Facilities Committee Chair Frank Harden said that initially a combined CRPR facility was planned as part of the Whitehall Road Regional Park project. After that was thrown into a years-long delay, the new building was dropped from the plans. At the same time, rental rates in the region climbed significantly.
‘If we decided today we were going to build a facility, we’re three to five years away from when we can move into it,’ Harden said. ‘If we wait another year, or another six months, that [rental rate] number is going to get bigger. It’s not going to get smaller. We felt as the ad hoc committee that it’s time to do something. We went looking and this proposal is what we have now that we can do that is financially feasible and will save us money in the long run, giving us time until we can solve the problem permanently.
‘This is an interim fix and something we can get going right now with the money we can do it with. The longer we wait the more costly it’s going to get.’
