State panel often OKs land purchases

The bipartisan board rarely asks questions or turns down requests.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Members of a bipartisan state panel have allowed Ohio’s public universities to make about 150 land purchases worth more than $95 million in the past five years, rarely asking questions or turning down requests, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The latest proposal to go before the state Controlling Board is the University of Akron’s plan to buy a 190-room hotel complex at a cost of $22.7 million. If approved today, it will be the most expensive land purchase by a public university in Ohio in at least 25 years, according a computer analysis by The Columbus Dispatch.

The $22.7 million cost is more than double the property’s $9.8 million official tax valuation. Most properties sell for more than their official valuation, but universities are paying on average about 63 percent more than the land’s tax value, the Dispatch said.

The board

The Controlling Board has seven members — three members of the Ohio House, three from the state Senate and a board president appointed by the governor.

Board members will definitely have some questions about the University of Akron plan, said Republican state Sen. John Carey, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Controlling Board.

The board often wonders about universities’ land buys when college leaders so often complain that they don’t have the proper funding to maintain current facilities, he said.

“It does seem sometimes that just because the land is available the university wants to buy it,” Carey said. “Sometimes there’s a concern that they are buying to be buying.”

The Controlling Board has turned down just one proposal in 25 years — a request from Youngstown State University in the 1990s, the newspaper said.

The University of Akron’s plan is to buy the eight-story, Quaker Square hotel complex downtown and convert it into dorms for 382 students. Plans also call for offices, a banquet hall and 450 parking spaces.

School officials say the growing campus needs more space. The university is tearing down housing for about 350 students on the other side of the campus to make way for a $55 million, 30,000-seat football stadium to replace the 68-year-old Rubber Bowl.

State Rep. Jay Hottinger, a Republican from Newark who sits on the Controlling Board, said the Akron proposal won’t result in increased tuition, room or board.

“It’s their prerogative to decide what their campus is going to look like,” he said. “In many ways, you can point to it as a sign of health and a positive future for the university.”