🎥 UPPR lease to be signed; downtown pavilion project ‘on track’

Hays City Attorney John Bird explains all Union Pacific Railroad leases are — Hays City Attorney John Bird explains all leases with Union Pacific Railroad are terminable with a 30-day notice.

By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The city of Hays has several leases with Union Pacific Railroad, including right-of-way parking in the downtown area and for the UP Park at 10th and Main. At any time, UPRR can give 30 days notice and terminate those leases.

City commissioners approved Thursday night entering into a new lease for railroad property on the east edge of the park for the Downtown Pavilion Project. This lease, however, is part of a limited indemnification agreement with the Downtown Hays Development Corporation (DHDC).

DHDC will pay the city’s yearly $3,000 lease, with an automatic increase of three percent per year. The agreement also requires DHDC to pay all costs associated with dismantling and/or moving the pavilion if UPPR terminates the ground lease with the city and requires removal of the pavilion.

“What we’ve done is laid most of the risk off on DHDC,” explained City Attorney John Bird. “You, as the board of directors of the city have, I think, done what you’re supposed to do, which is to say, if the railroad does for an arbitrary reason say the pavilion has to be taken back out, it’s not going to come out of your (the city’s) pocket. It comes out of DHDC’s.”

pavilion site plan — Site plan by FHSU students for the open air pavilion in the east end of Union Pacific Park, 10th and Main

The $190,000 project was first presented to the city May 5, 2016, by DHDC and a group of FHSU Construction Management students for construction of a 40′ by 80′ open air pavilion and a restroom. If FHSU is not able to finish the project, DHDC must assume all labor costs for completion of the pavilion.

The restroom is a pre-fabricated building which has already been ordered. Vice-Mayor James Meier pointed out the restroom, to be placed east of the pavilion, “could be picked up and moved to a different park and used someplace else and we’d be out the moving costs. It’s not like we’d have to tear down a bathroom and not use it.”

Annual costs to be paid by the city total $1,294 which includes utility bills for restroom heat and electric meters, janitorial supplies and the additional insurance required by UP.