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Niles park board reviews wellness center lease
By Jordan Cohen
NILES
The city’s park board has agreed with a proposal to assume supervisory control of the Wellness Center in Waddell Park should a tenant lease the money-losing facility.
“It needs to run better than it is today,” Atty. Douglas Neuman, former Niles law director, told the board Monday.
The center is financed by the city’s general fund. Its annual operating losses played a role in the state auditor’s declaration of fiscal emergency more than two years ago.
“[The center] lost more than $1 million dollars in the last eight years, and we can’t keep funding it with income-tax money,” said Neuman, who was hired by the city to draft the lease.
“I’m looking forward to helping out,” said Paul Hake, the most recent appointment to the three-member board. Hake and David Wilkerson, a board member and former councilman, attended the meeting. A third member, Robert Mannella, did not.
The lease, which is expected to be approved by city council at its Wednesday meeting, authorizes the board to conduct regular inspections and maintain grounds and landscaping. There would no longer be city employees on the center’s payroll.
Carmen Vivolo, parks director, would have the authority to conduct criminal background checks of every employee hired by the tenant.
At a previous meeting, Vivolo said he already had discussed a lease with several interested individuals. The director did not identify them.
The proposed lease would require the tenant to pay more than $240,000 annually for three years with an option for a three-year renewal. The figure covers the annual payment the city makes on the loan that financed the center.
The lease agreement has the city paying for water, sewer and electricity as long as usage stays within current center averages. The tenant would be responsible if those limits are exceeded.
Wellness Center utilities have sometimes cost the city as much as $18,000 monthly, but Neuman said asking a tenant to shoulder those bills would likely kill any possibility of a lease.
“Council has got to make this attractive, otherwise there will be no lease, and we’ll be right back where we were,” Neuman warned.
The tenant would be required to maintain the building as a recreational facility in accordance with the original deeds that granted the park to Niles more than 85 years ago.
Neuman said council can terminate the lease if the tenant fails to abide by its provisions.
But what if no one wants to lease the center?
“We are working on a Plan B. … We’re still compiling it,” said Councilwoman Linda Marchese, D-3rd, chairwoman of council’s public grounds committee. She declined to go into specifics.
The city is apparently giving up on selling naming rights to the facility. The building’s official name is “The Mayor Ralph A. Infante Wellness Center,” but Marchese and Mayor Thomas Scarnecchia, Infante’s successor, have proposed removing the ex-mayor’s name.
Infante was indicted in November on 56 criminal counts including bribery, theft and racketeering.
Neuman said the city is free to remove Infante’s name from outside the building since its responsibilities include the center’s exterior should the building be leased. The city is also responsible for roof and parking-lot maintenance.