MOUNT VERNON — The long-running saga of updating or relocating the shared offices of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), Title Office and the Ohio State Highway Patrol Driver’s Exam (OSHP/DX) station has taken a turn for the epic, county officials learned Thursday. After previously expressing no preferences, the Ohio Department of Development (DOD) suddenly weighed into the fray this week on behalf of the OSHP with a list of requirements for the renovation of the current facility on North Sandusky Street. The meeting was attended by the county commissioners, Clerk of Courts Mary Jo Hawkins, Deputy Registrar Sam Barone, and building owner Tom Sutton.
To share the space, the current arrangement has the state of Ohio serving as lease-holder on behalf of the BMV, with the Clerk of Courts’ Auto Title Office and the OSHP/DX subleasing their offices. According to Deputy Registrar Sam Barone, the state has decided that since the facility is a third party lease, meaning that neither the state nor the county owns it, and since two of the entities operating in it are state-sponsored entities, they want to have some say-so in how the facility is altered.
According to County Commissioners’ Clerk Rochelle Shackle, who spoke with a representative of DOD this week, the state wants the facility to be updated with double front doors, to provide an airlock to improve heating and cooling efficiency. Instead of the current pass-through which leaves the BMV open and unsecured, the state would additionally like to see a common corridor installed, with all three offices having doors off the corridor. The state also said that there should be windows on the west side of the building, and that the offices should all have separate controls for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Upon further discussion, the commissioners decided that the DOD must have meant the south side of the building for window locations, as the west wall of the offices would not have an outside view.
“The state is also concerned about the parking lot,” Barone said.
“Let’s take care of the inside before we move on to the outside,” said Sutton.
Commissioner Teresa Bemiller expressed concerns about how much the state was dictating proposed changes. Barone said that he was concerned that changes to the facility could raise rent at a time when revenue was down.
Meanwhile, in a side conversation, Commissioners Allen Stockberger and Robert Wise sketched potential wall changes on a drawing Sutton supplied of the current office space. After trying a few different options, they sketched out a pattern of walls which would create a common corridor for separate offices. This plan would alter the current BMV office shape, but preserve its square footage. The title office would move across the hallway to where the DX currently is, the DX would move back to the exercise/dance studio currently behind them, and the studio would move back into an unoccupied room further west in the building. This plan would have the double advantage of matching the state’s requirements for the separate offices, while leaving the old title office space open for Sutton to rent out to another potential customer.
Examination of this plan renewed concerns about cost. Barone and Hawkins both said that the final option may well be that they have to suffer through and hope to find better facilities later, if costs were too high.
A mildly exasperated Sutton said that he couldn’t quote any prices until the county and state agreed on what they wanted.
Stockberger said that though revenues are down, there is still a positive cash flow in the county, and that the county had been planning on making improvements for the last several years to improve the shared BMV facilities. Stockberger said that it is still too early to rule out renovations to the current building.
Barone said that he would hate to postpone a potential future move to a new building by sinking a lot of money into the current facility. He pointed out that if the county did elect to build a new facility, the two state entities housed there would pay rent to Knox County, allowing it to recoup some of its expenses.
Wise threw a new idea into the mix, by asking Sutton if he would consider selling part of the existing building to the county. Stockberger said that in that scenario, any improvements made to the facility would be building equity instead of loosing money on rental fees. Wise said that if the county could buy it, they could eliminate the corridor, giving the offices more space by putting outside entrances to each office on the south side of the building, all opening out onto a shared, covered walkway.
The group decided to have Sutton quote prices for the changes sketched out by Stockberger and Wise, but to also consider whether or not he would be willing to sell part of the building, in which case more substantial changes might make financial sense. They planned to meet again on March 5 to review pricing.
