In the end, no agreement was reached, but Thursday night, city and county commissioners seemed to be closer to an agreement on an expo center lease than they have been in quite some time.
The Saline County Commission and the Salina City Commission met in a joint session Thursday night in the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce Visit Salina Annex. Approximately 35 people were on hand to observe the proceedings.
Salina Mayor Trent Davis opened the meeting by telling those officials assembled to put aside what has already been said on the issue.
"We're going to, I think, take a little different tack on this tonight," Davis said. "Now for this to work, everybody around this table has to forget everything we've ever discussed. Alright?"
Going into the meeting, the county had asked the city for a 40-year lease, with the county making $5.7 million in improvements to the seven acres of property in Salina's Kenwood Park that the county uses for the expo center. The city, on the other hand, proposed a 25-year lease with three five-year extensions.
"What we want to look at, from our perspective, is how's it look...the form," Davis said. "The function of what goes on at the expo center has probably become intertwined in the form part and I don't think we should necessarily get into telling you how to run the expo center because it's your expo center. We just want to make sure it is appealing to the eye. A word I heard was 'pop.' It may not pop like the Christmas lights across Santa Fe, but we want it to be attractive."
Davis then asked Vice-Mayor Mike Hoppock to speak about items on a list proposed by GH2, an equine design firm the county asked to create a proposed master plan for the upgrade of the expo center. The GH2 proposal came to slightly more than $5.75 million.
"As a taxpayer, I'm not sure I want to end up paying $5.7 million to upgrade that facility," Hoppock said. "So I think what we need to do tonight is not look at what problems we have, but what solutions we can come up with to continue the relationship we have."
Hoppock asked the county commissioners whether the GH2 proposal to demolish barns 3, 5, and 6 and replace them with new stalls was something that was needed or just an alternative.
"In my way of thinking, it was a request from the city because of the asthetics that those buildings look like at this current point," County Commission Chair Robert Vidricksen responded. "It goes back to an asthetic value that the city placed on it at the time, what a year and a half ago. Two years ago. Whatever it was."
Hoppock said he thought changes could be made to the barns to make them more asthetically pleasing rather than incur the greater cost of replacing them.
After haggling over which items on the GH2 list were asthetic items, the joint commissioner group came up with a list of potential updates that once completed would meet the city's request for the facility to be attractive. Among those items are the following.
Update barns 2, 3, 5 and 6
New windows for Agricultural Hall (Ag Hall)
Repair and paint Barn 1
Repair and paint Kenwood Hall
Davis said that he and Vidricksen had walked around each building.
"Barn 2, for example. It is our opinion that by touching the building and looking at it, that the whole skin doesn't need to be replaced. If you could do it in panels. I'm assuming it's not all one big sheet of metal, but there are places that need to be fixed. Alot of it is structurally intact," Davis said.
It was noted that the GH2 proposal included a plaza at the front of Ag Hall, however it had been determined that such an area was not possible because of the need for trailers to access the double doors.
City Manager Mike Schrage as whether a strip of grass could be planted along the curbing to make the asphalt-paved area in front of Ag Hall more appealing. Currently the area is paved with asphalt from the building to the curb.
Expo Center Director Rick Lamer said that the area is used to park large stock trailers and every inch of space is need.
County Commissioner Jim Weese suggested the use of brick pavers, such as the city had used in the downtown streetscape project, rather than grass to enhance the look of the front of Ag Hall. The use of pavers would not reduce the space for parking stock trailers and would enhance the look of the area.
Weese also suggested a 30-year lease with no extensions. That proposal was met somewhat favorably, but nothing was finalized during the meeting.
The next step, according to Vidricksen, is for the county to take the list of agreed-upon enhancements and determine actual dollar amounts for each one, before any sort of lease -- 30 years or otherwise -- would be negotiated.