Emergency Services will Lease Building from Greenbrier Valley Airport

lewisburg – The Greenbrier County Airport Authority will soon be the Greenbrier County Office of Emergency Services’ landlord – if only temporarily.

County commissioners agreed Tuesday to sign a lease with the GCAA for a structure designated as Building No. 2 on airport property. Once the deal is consummated, the OES will move its offices into the building, where it will share space with the county’s mobile command center apparatus. The sheriff’s office will also be able to continue to keep its crime scene unit inside the 6,000-square-foot building.

Both the mobile command center and the crime scene unit are already housed rent-free in Building No. 2, but the airport authority sought and received an appraisal on the structure in April, with an eye toward leasing the property. The appraisal determined the selling cost of the building to be $270,000 and the replacement cost $317,000.

The building was constructed in the late 1980s, according to GCAA Chairman Deborah Phillips.

While the building had been leased by the state for $550 a month in connection with a highway project that is scheduled to end this summer, the authority set the actual market rental value of the structure at between $1,500 and $1,800 a month.

Mike Honaker, director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management for the county, first pitched the lease arrangement to the commission during budget talks in March. He cautioned at the time that the GCAA could find a paying tenant for the space and oust the county vehicles currently parked there.

Honaker pointed out that both of the vehicles must be housed in an enclosed space due to sensitive equipment and, in the case of the crime scene unit, chemicals stored therein.

He said Building No. 2 has plenty of room to garage the vehicles and still provide space for six Emergency Services offices and a storage area for PPE (personal protective equipment) for the use of emergency responders. The offices are currently located in a 13-year-old doublewide trailer.

The year-to-year lease agreed to on Tuesday can be renewed for three years at $1,500 per month, plus utilities, which Honaker estimated at around $500 a month. OES is permitted to pay the rent with 911 fees, he said.

Honaker acknowledged that the new quarters represent “a short-term solution,” noting he is still looking at using the former Maxwelton school building, located on the three-acre tract where the county’s 911 Center stands. The county purchased that property from the board of education last year for $240,000.

But remodeling the building to accommodate the large vehicles as well as offices will take time.

Commissioner Mike McClung suggested $1,500 per month might be below market value for Building No. 2.

Commissioner Tammy Tincher, who represents the commission on the airport authority, said the GCAA had already voted to approve the proposed lease a week earlier.

McClung voted against the lease agreement. Tincher and Commission President Lowell Rose voted in favor.

Email: talvey

@register-herald.com

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