City not buying building it’s leasing for youth recreation center
The City of Pontiac will not be buying the Michigan School for the Arts building that it has been leasing and using as the city’s youth recreation center.
In June 2018, the city entered into a three-year lease agreement with Creative Schools Management LLC to rent the 50,000-sqaure-foot building, located at 825
Golf Drive, for around $25,000 per month. The lease agreement also gave the city two options to purchase the building prior to the lease expiring on June 30, 2021.
This week, Mayor Deirdre Waterman and City Council President Kermit Williams both confirmed to The Oakland Press that the city will not be exercising its option to purchase the building for $2.85 million, although city council had set aside, several years ago, $3.25 million to do so.
City council had until April 30 to exercise that purchase option.
According to city documents, the city attorney’s office recently attempted to get the building’s owner, Dr. Carl Byerly, CEO of Creative Schools Services Inc., to extend the lease past June 2021, but to no avail. With the city deciding to not purchase the building, Byerly is planning to sell the property “to third parties who have expressed a desire to rede
velop the property.”
In an April 1 memo to Waterman and city council, George Contis, the city’s real estate counsel, said transforming other city-owned or controlled facilities into a youth recreation center far exceeds the $2.85 million price tag to purchase the Michigan School for the Arts building.
Williams told The Oakland Press that the city is seeking an alternative site to host youth recreation programming until a more permanent site is identified. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the center has hosted limited youth programming.
“The location is not really accessible and need a lot of upkeep,” he said. “Our kids deserve something state of the art. We could maybe even build something from scratch on another city property. I have reached out to several possible alternative sites to continue youth programs until there is a suitable place for the children.”
Waterman, who wanted to see the city purchase the building, said she has concerns about youth programming being interrupted this summer and beyond with the city failing to purchase the building or secure a short-term or long-term lease extension. Prior to COVID-19, Waterman said 250-300 children were at the center daily.
She call’s city council’s failure to purchase the building a “travesty.”
Before entering into the lease back in 2018, city officials had identified two buildings as possible locations for a youth recreation center including the David Ewalt Center and the former Edison Perdue School. Both buildings require significant improvements, costing millions of dollars, and would not be ready in time before the lease is up at 825 Golf Drive on June 30.