American Philatelic Society -- Board of Director Meeting Minutes June 2000

Attendees: American Philatelic Society Board of Directors President Peter P. McCann; Vice Presidents Gordon Morison, Diane Boehret, Charles Peterson; Secretary Janet Klug; Treasurer Nancy Zielinski Clark; Directors-at-Large Ann M. Triggle and Wayne Youngblood. American Philatelic Research Library Board of Trustees: William Bauer, Ken Grant, Peter Martin.

Staff: APS Executive Director Robert E. Lamb; Director of Shows and Exhibitions Ken Martin, Director of Administration Frank Sente; Controller Scott Frazier; Director of Sales Division Tom Horn; Library Director Gini Horn; Director of Expertizing Mercer Bristow; Editor Bill Welch; Society Attorney David Flood; Director of Education Kim Kowalczyk, staff members Ilene Barner and Bill Dixon.

Visitors: Gary Hendren, Jack Marder, Dan Clemson, Gordon Wrenn, Tom Kurtz, Keith Wagner, Barry Barner, Ralph Nafziger, Jesse Boehret, Frank Kowalczyk, John Flannery, Dick Moore, Stephen Luster, Judy Johnson, George Kramer, Nan Butkovich, Warren Stoddard, Tony Wawrukeiwicz, Vic Ohman, Rob Haeseler.

President Peter P. McCann called the informational Board Meeting of the American Philatelic Society to order in August Hall, American Philatelic Building, State College, Pennsylvania on Sunday, June 25, 2000 at 9:05 a.m.

President McCann welcomed and introduced the combined APS and APRL Boards. He welcomed the many visitors to the meeting and introduced Ken Lawrence, Chairman of the APS Building Expansion Committe and called upon him to give his report.

Lawrence: The APS Building Expansion Committee consists of Dr. Peter McCann who is an ex officio member, Hubert Skinner of Louisiana, Herb Trenchard of Maryland, Randy Neil of Kansas, Harvey Tilles of North Carolina, and George Kramer of New Jersey. Cheryl Ganz was a member of the committee but had to withdraw. Lawrence is the fourth chairman in a succession of committees that began several years ago, first chaired by John Foxworth, then Bud Hennig, then Bill Bauer, and now Lawrence.

We have examined every possibility. The Society desperately needs more space for both the library and the working staff. We are suffocating in this current building. Each of the prior committees investigated a whole range of possibilities from moving the Society headquarters to a major metropolitan area to building from scratch. We met with experts. We commissioned studies such as the one by Dr. Charles Lowry, Dean of Libraries in the University of Maryland. He examined proposals to digitize or otherwise reduce the volume of our holdings. We found out that was not a solution. In the past five years we have exhaustively studied both the problem and the possible solutions to the problem. Lawrence made a presentation to the Board in Portland in February where we had a wonderful presentation by the best and most creative architectural firm in Central Pennsylvania. That proposed an expansion of the present building. The proposal was complete with a scale model of the proposed changes. We got preliminary approval from the Board of Directors to pursue that plan. The Committee was authorized to go ahead with a feasibility study that would put numbers to the plan and to see if we could come up with a plan to finance those numbers.

We found out two things. One was that the numbers were far more expensive than we originally anticipated with the preliminary look at it. The second was that when we made preliminary attempts to get an idea whether this was a feasible amount of money to raise with approaches to our most generous supporters, it seemed that it was beyond our reach. We were in a dither about where to go next.

Sometime in the spring we became aware that the historic Match Factory in Bellefonte, nine miles away from here, was once again available for commercial development and preservation. In the previous times when we had been looking at all the possibilities, that site was not available. Indeed, almost no commercial property is available in this entire area. What is available, we would not want. They have other drawbacks such as accessibility. In a way, discovering the investors in the Match Factory who had planned to build a microbrewery had failed in their mission after pouring literally millions of dollars into the project, turned out to present us with an opportunity to solve our space problems and accomplish other things that bode well for the future of the Society. We had our architectural consultant take a look at this proposal. The costs are very similar either way, but the advantage that the Match Factory proposal enjoys over expanding the current site is that we would be able to fund that proposal with the sale of this property.

We were taken by surprise when we commissioned market studies of this property that showed it was a bad idea to expand this building given the economic events that are going on surrounding us. The whole area is undergoing a boom as the interchange for Route 322 up the street will soon become the interchange for I-99 connecting I-80 on the North with the Pennsylvania Turnpike on the South. This creates an enormous flourishing of economic activity. It turns out that the highest best use of this property is to tear down the building and make it available for commercial development in concert with all the other projects going on in the vicinity.

After exploring all the possibilities in careful detail the decision was that, subject to a number of conditions being satisfied, the Expansion Committee proposed to the Board of Directors that they give preliminary approval to the decision to move Society headquarters to the Match Factory in Bellefonte.

There are some other advantages to be gained if we make this move besides solving the problems we set out to solve. One is that by participating in a very high level historic preservation project of great significance we would bring a different kind of national attention and praise to the Society. Another is that one of the additional problems to the existing building, besides the staff suffocating without enough space to work, is that we are now not only the contract post office for our own mail room, but we have become the post office for the entire community. That means we have to have a staff person and staff salary devoted just to serving the public. One of the conditions of the proposed move to the Match Factory is that we lease on a long term basis about 20,000 square feet of one of the buildings we had originally thought about demolishing to the post office to make into its main post office in Bellefonte. If that occurs, the postmaster in Bellefonte is prepared to allow us to continue processing our own outgoing mail as we have been doing. This gives us the security we need. We would not be obliged to serve the public at a cost to the Society.

Many of the visitors to this meeting are in town for Summer Seminar which had to be moved to the Days Inn downtown because the Penn State site we have used for many years was not available to us on any of the dates that we needed. We had to move to a less convenient and less attractive location to carry it on. There is plenty of space in the Match Factory facility to build our own seminar meeting space which we couldn’t possibly do here with the cost figures we were given.

In Bellefonte itself we have not only future accessibility to people on the highway that this site will have when I-99 goes through, but Bellefonte also has an interchange at Interstate 80 which is the main east - west corridor connecting New York with Cleveland, Chicago, and points west. It is more likely to bring in a stream of members who come to use the facilities of the Society, but also tourists and people interested in what we do might have an easier time stopping in to look at what we have.

A number of questions have been raised about the Bellefonte site, all of which are perfectly legitimate and which we have explored in some detail. The principal concern was that the site is on a designated flood plain of Spring Creek. First of all, in the past century there have been two "hundred year floods," twice the frequency of disasters that statistics predict. In neither case did flood water enter the portion of the property we are looking at. The old lumber yard retail center scheduled for demolition was the one building nearby that did take flood water. When we visited the site and when members of these Boards visited yesterday, everyone got to see that the actual elevation of the site that we are looking at is substantially higher than ground level. It is about loading dock level throughout the property.

The town of Bellefonte has been pouring enormous amounts of energy, talent, and money into restoration of its historic district, of which we got a tour yesterday. If the Match Factory is restored, it would become the heart of the historic district. Tallyrand Park, which is gorgeous, is a wonderful wooded green beside Spring Creek. It will be expanded all the way up to the Match Factory property. It is also beside the historic railroad which is one of the tourist attractions of downtown Bellefonte.

Because the former investors were planning to take the bankrupt Clasters Lumberyard, the last occupant of the Match Factory, and convert it into a microbrewery, all of the studies in terms of the soundness of each of the nineteen buildings that comprise the property have been done. The potential environmental problems have been addressed and solved with studies the microbrewery paid for and that we stand to inherit if we go with this proposal.

There are financial advantages galore to us. There is a great potential for grants for historic preservation, for embellishment of the adjacent trout stream, and all sorts of other things. We have consulted local preservation experts and our architect has personal experience with such projects. Everyone is very enthusiastic with that element of it. In addition, if we go ahead with this project, for every dollar we invest in preservation itself we would qualify for substantial tax credits. Since we are a nonprofit tax exempt corporation, we don’t need the tax credits. It turns out there is a market for tax credits. They can be sold for cash and would provide us with an additional source of financing.

A succession of committees have explored this for the past five years. We have looked at every conceivable opportunity. The Society’s structure being what it is, there is not perfect overlap from each two year period to the next so we always have the problem of making everybody who is new aware of everything that came before. People are constantly coming up with questions that have been answered and in many cases have been followed by decisions by the Board giving direction where to go next. The fact is that the existing building is fraught with problems of its own. If we don’t make a decision to solve the problem in this particular way or in some other way that no one has yet proposed, we are not free of problems. We cannot think staying here is a solution. The danger to the APRL collection is greater here from structural problems in this building than it is on a flood plain in Bellefonte. We have set forth some contingencies which include getting a long term lease from the Postal Service, demolishing the eyesores around the building, extending the park, putting in public parking, adding a traffic light, getting the EPA certificate, negotiating some relief from school taxes, some landscaping that needs to be done, and some sprucing up the bridge for the historic railway. There will be unforeseen problems we will have to address. There is no such thing as a perfect building in the real world. Lawrence has looked for commercial real estate property for six months hoping we could find another place. This proposal is Lawrence’s very best answer to our existing problems. There is no other proposal that comes close to matching this one. In five years we have exhaustively studied every possibility.

Lamb: Many have reservations about this project and Lamb understands them because he has had the same reservations. When we went out to look at the Match Factory it was as a result of an article in Centre Daily Times saying the borough had just acquired this building and wanted to sell it. It looked like it was a suitable size for our needs. It turned out to be enormous. Lamb felt an obligation to go out and look at it believing it would just be so he could tick it off a list to say he has looked at everything available. He did not expect anything to come of it. After the first meeting, it sounded more interesting. He still had reservations about the flood plain and the cost of renovations. Lamb took Frank Sente, who has a good business head, and Scott Frazier to view the site. The more we looked at it, every avenue we explored we found out these really weren’t the kind of problems we thought they would be. When we got to the question of cost, we found the cost of renovating that building would be about the same as doing something at this site that was in any way creative. Spec office space is not too hard to put up but it really was not the kind of image we wanted for the Society. We wanted something that presented the dignity and standing that the American Philatelic Society has with the collecting community.

We kept exploring the options and exploring the money. We found not only the cost was going to be about the same at the Match Factory, we found we would have the tax credits. We found if we did something at the Match Factory we had our present building to sell and apply against the costs out there. If we expand here, we don’t have anything to sell. We have to go to our membership hat in hand. That is a lot of money for us to raise from our membership. We have loyal and generous members but it got to be a very big task.

Even at that, we thought it wouldn’t work. When you get a building like that there is maintenance cost. We spend about $25,000 - $30,000 a year maintaining this building. Even if we double the size of this building, we will be doubling our maintenance costs. That is another major expense we have to absorb. If we go to the Match Factory, Lamb figures we will triple or quadruple those expenses. Lamb approached the borough and told them we could not afford the maintenance cost. Then the postmaster of Bellefonte phoned and said they were looking for some space for the main Bellefonte post office. He needed 20,000 to 25,000 square feet. He asked if he could walk through the facility. The postmaster liked the space that was available. The postmaster used to deliver mail to the APS. He liked the Society; he liked being co-located with us; and he liked the facility. He asked to pursue this further. We figured if we could get one major tenant, we could overcome our maintenance problems. We can cover the cost of maintaining that facility.

We have 125,000 square feet out there. We have 25,000 square feet in our present building. The Match Factory is five times the amount of space we have. That is a little misleading because the best thing to do with some of those buildings is to tear them down. We wouldn’t net 125,000 square feet, but we would net a considerable amount of space. If the post office rented 20,000 to 25,000 square feet, and we used 30,000 to 35,000 square feet, we have only used half of the available space. Some of it we would like to seal off for future expansion. If the library grows, we don’t have to worry about having to spend money in another ten years to expand. It also gives us space for us to do some additional rentals. The architect has suggested there is another area of about 15,000 square feet that is an ideal rental space for us. An article about this proposal appeared prematurely in the local newspaper, and since that time Lamb has received a string of phone calls from two categories of people. One is from people who want to buy our present facility. Lamb has three firm offers on his desk right now. In addition, Lamb has received calls from people who want to rent space in the facility in Bellefonte. Some say they want space next month and hope we can do something for them. That is not realistic, but it is true that if you visualize the kind of facility this could be on Tallyrand Park and if you look at what is happening in Bellefonte itself, you can see the rental prospects are very good. With 60,000 square feet left to rent, and a 1% office vacancy rate in State College at present, there is a high demand all around this area. Our real estate people advise us it is a very good prospect. We’d like to do some rentals if we can get it. The Society can use the money not only now, but it would provide us a good, sound footing for the future.

We are in a hobby where the organized institutions of the hobby are not growing. In looking to the future we must have a sound financial footing so we can provide the level of service we provide today without having to increase the dues on the people who are in the hobby. From that point of view, it is not only fiscally responsible, but it is fiscally irresponsible not to look for those additional revenue sources.

If we can work out the arrangements with the Post Office for that one area, and if we get one or two major tenants there would be enough income. We will have to be selective about the business we accept so they would contribute to the tone and not detract from the fact this would be a major philatelic center.

This facility would afford us the opportunity to do something that is needed. It would provide us enough space to provide some assistance to the smaller affiliates and organizations that need a place to hang their hats and can’t afford their own facility. We would not have to charge them much to recoup our costs.

Clark: Has previously been Chairman of the Historic Preservation Commission in Lexington, Georgia. Clark has met with the historic preservation officer in Bellefonte. The current national historic district in Bellefonte is outlined in the map they have provided. They are offering to include the Match Factory in the designated historic district. They would be very happy to do that. If they do, that would mean we would get 20c for every dollar we spend on many of the renovations we would make. That would include items such as floors, walls, partitions, ceilings, tiles, windows, doors, components of air conditioning, heating, plumbing. The real guts of the building will be covered under this 20c per dollar. In addition, there are soft costs which include construction period interest and taxes, architect fees, engineering fees, and construction management costs. There is a lot of paperwork to be filed in order to get this, but it is there for us to use. That money can then be reused by us to develop areas that are not covered. If Bellefonte does this for us, and it is a lengthy process, they will be saving us a lot of time and money if we wanted to go after those tax credits. It would be a very good deal for us.

Triggle: Spoke with the historic preservation officer the previous night and she said the filing cannot go in until next year.

Clark: It would be done in April, but that is all right. The process does not have to be completed when work commences, but it does have to be started. It will be prepared to be filed by the end of the month.

Peterson: What constraints and requirements does the historic designation bring with it? Will it put impositions on us?

Clark: Any changes that we would make would have to go before the historic commission. It meets two times a month. It needs the information to consider the Wednesday before they meet, and they meet on a Monday. This is the local commission and that is who we would be going through. Their standards for historic preservation are exactly the same as the national standards. We go through the local commission, and if there is a need for a variance, they grant it. There is a process for appealing that. In the past twenty years they have never had to take it through that process.

Peterson: Was pleased to hear the imposition of the standards and the interpretation thereof were done on a local basis twice a month. That is more easily accessible.

Clark: Yes, it is easily accessible. You have to have your proper paper work in order. You have to have the site plans and photographs and know what you are doing. The buildings which are considered to be not contributing from a historic standpoint, the commission agrees with us that they could come down. Everything we have discussed about modifications on the outside have been mutually agreed to. The historic standards only apply to the outside of the buildings. The changes to the inside of the building would not be governed by them.

Lawrence: We can vary considerably in what we want to do, but the tax credits apply for restoration. If we begin modernizing something, we won’t get tax credits for that.

Clark: The preservation commission there is very willing to work with us in working out what can and cannot be done and offer guidance about what is appropriate and what is not.

Lamb: There have been three meetings with the architect that has been doing preliminary work for us and the borough’s historical preservation people. They have gone over the plans to the extent they exist at this point. There is not a contentious issue that exists at this time.

Peterson: Raised the issue because that was the initial reaction from many of the Board about how much it was going to cost us to maintain this historic property.

Lamb: Knew nothing about historic preservation a month ago. From talking with people and researching it he found that the federal standards have a great deal of flexibility in them, but the federal standards are impacted by local attitudes. Some towns use the historical preservation standards to limit growth. They make them extremely strict. They essentially use them to keep new construction out. That is not the case in Bellefonte.

Triggle: Spoke with someone last evening about the possibility of burying the wires. At the moment electricity is being served to the buildings in the old fashioned way. While that was the way buildings were served in the past, they said that was a positive and they would see nothing wrong with it.

McCann: We would get a tax credit for 20c on the dollar for work that we did on the building. What can we do with those tax credits?

Lamb: Discussed this with a banker who specializes in tax credits. There are apparently several bankers who sell tax credits in this area. You sell the tax credits at a discount. You don’t get 20c because the company who is buying them has to get something out of them, and the banker makes a little money. What you get for them depends on who needs them and how badly they need them and how many you have to sell. These are market factors. The banker told Lamb we could expect to receive anywhere from 15 to 18 cents for every 20c tax credit. This is a substantial return.

Lamb: No, the limit is mandated by who wants to buy them. There is no ceiling.

Klug: Has been on the APS Board for two and a half years. This is the third proposal for building expansion she has seen. Last night we had a charming tour of the town of Bellefonte. We had a chance to meet some interesting people from the town at dinner and discuss the Match Factory with them, and we all had a wonderful time. All of us are at the point where we are beginning to think more with our hearts – how we "feel" about the Match Factory proposal. This is not the way to go about doing this project. What is important is what we know about the project. We need to make our decision based on facts rather than feelings. It will be very important from here on out. Klug presented a list of documents the Board needed to see before we next discuss the Match Factory expansion.

Morison: Wished to add an analysis for comparison purposes of the other proposals we have had presented in such a fashion that we could make financial decisions. We had the proposal at Portland that was very well laid out with numbers that would serve that purpose. There was a proposal before that to add a wing as a separate building. Was that ever costed out? That should be brought together with the Portland one. Then we would have three proposals to compare. The fourth alternative would be to do nothing, but we have already ruled that out or at least as a Board we seem to have said that. One of the reasons Morison is not 100% convinced we should move is because one of the big things we have always wanted is a hotel nearby. Now that we have it, we are thinking about moving away.

If you look at downtown Bellefonte, there is less traffic in the area. The connections are at either end, two or three miles out. Here the connection to the Interstate is right here. You get off and you are at the building. This building can be sold for more money, and maybe the financial aspects make it a very viable proposal. Somehow or other we need a financial comparison.

Bauer: We need to know what the net cost of Option A is compared with Options B and C.

Morison: Our last proposal for this building was to put a mall in it and redoing the building to a large extent. Maybe there is rational for that, although Morison was not thoroughly convinced there was. It is easier to add another building as outlined in the first proposal and the movement to that building would be a whole lot less expensive than moving to a new place. Whether it can be financed or not is an entirely different question. These reports should be distributed to the Board in advance so we have enough time to study them. We never seem to have enough time.

McCann: Something like this is important enough that we need time to look at it and to really think about it. We can’t walk into a room and see it for the first time and then, an hour later, have to make a decision.

Triggle: If we could cost out having tenants in any separate building we could build here at this location so that we could offset income from that, not necessarily taking money from our Society for funding. Then we could make a direct comparison with what it would be in Bellefonte.

McCann: Klug also asked about our status as a Society having tenants and profits. It probably can be done, but we need to be certain of that.

Peterson: Who actually owns our building? And who would own the other building?

Lamb: The American Philatelic Research Library owns this building and Lamb believed the library should own the other building.

Peterson: We are incorporating Library Board here at this meeting, but there isn’t any one of the three principal officers of the Library here. They may not have even been furnished the information. We are talking as though we, APS, are selling and buying the building. We need to get the APRL senior officers in here quickly.

Bauer: Agreed. The Library Board has not been fully apprised of what has been going on.

Lawrence: Two library representatives have been on the expansion committee all along.

Bauer: To show what has happened, earlier Lawrence referred to a study of the library that was done by someone from the University of Maryland. Bauer had not seen that report.

Grant: If we do chose to move, Grant assumed we would be wired for the Internet. Is the backbone in Bellefonte comparable to that in State College? It is really fast here. Since more and more of our activities are taking place on the Internet, and it is going into a historical district we may want to make sure there are fiber or CAT5 connections.

McCann: Bellefonte is the county seat and there is a lot of county government there. One would reasonably assume it might be there, but we don’t know until we find out.

Grant: On the way to the dinner last evening, he noticed there was an Internet company which was a good sign.

Morison: Is there sufficient parking space for the post office and the carrier trucks? This would be a carrier station. Would the parking be behind it?

Lamb: There is more than ample space for them. They need 100 spaces and we need 50 to 75 spaces ourselves.

Lamb: The architect envisions the entrance way coming into the building would be tree lined with parking off to the left. There is ample room for parking all the way down.

Lamb: Did not know what leases the post office has. It has to be negotiated. They tend not to move, though. Once they have a carrier facility they tend to stay for along time.

Lawrence: They are looking for a sorting facility, too. They ran out of space here and had to move what they had here to Altoona. That is already overloaded. They really have a crisis in this county.

Clark: Before Providence there should be a business plan drawn up for actions so that whatever the decision is made we know how to proceed.

Morison: The business plan should be designed to show the three different proposals.

McCann: Yes, we have asked for it. It has to be a business plan looking at our proposals and possibilities. It has to cost them all out equally. This can be easily done on a computer program with a spread sheet for everything.

Bauer: Whatever presentations are made on this in Providence should be joint meetings of the APS and APRL.

Lamb: We will have to work that out. Maybe we can set it up for Wednesday morning.

Peterson: If the APRL Board is not included by that stage in time, it would make a mockery of it.

Bauer: Both boards need to be involved in all the discussion and presentations.

McCann: Was happy to do that, but it was not his call. It was up to the President of the APRL.

Triggle: Lawrence has said it was difficult convening his committee. Would it be possible for them to convene as a group?

Lawrence: We had a meeting scheduled and then three emergencies for three of them developed.

Triggle: There is quite a bit we have asked you to do, quite a number of reports to prepare.

Lawrence: We do our best within our resources. We are geographically disparate. We did manage that every member of the committee except for Skinner has been here and inspected the property and spoke with the officials. Lawrence still hoped to get Skinner here to do the same thing.

Bauer: There are only two months between now and the meeting at Providence. If all of these things cannot be accomplished by then, would it be best to postpone our decision until later in the year. We could call a special meeting.

Lawrence: The option won’t be with us that long. We don’t have all the time in the world. Bellefonte needs to make a decision and they have knocked themselves out to expedite everything for us.

Bauer: If you go to them with this list of contingencies, they are aware of the time it will take to accomplish this.

Lawrence: At a certain point they will need to see a commitment, not just endless questions if they are going to keep this on the table.

McCann: We have to move on this expeditiously, but we can’t make the decision unless we have the information we require. We will have it.

Morison: Do we have commitments in writing? Are they prepared to provide written commitments?

Lawrence: A lot of them are already in writing. The Postal Service is not in a position to present a proposal to anybody except to who holds title to the property. At a certain point somebody has to jump first.

Lamb: The Postal Service has to do a public solicitation of property. The involved postmasters and people up the chain have visited this site and find it more than satisfactory. That does not mean they can circumvent their obligation to do a public solicitation. The owner of the property or somebody that has the property under contract has to respond to this solicitation. If the Postal Service does not come into this facility, it would be almost impossible for us to handle the out year costs. We are in a Catch-22. If we get far enough along, Lamb would propose a contract with Bellefonte that is contingent upon a satisfactory tenant on the site.

Triggle: Will Lawrence have enough time to assemble his committee and do all the required reports by Providence? That is only two months away. It would not be sensible to try to rush in no matter whether they wish a decision from us or not. If we don’t have the facts in which to make the decision we should wait.

Lawrence: This is where is gets really exasperating. You need to take a good, close look at this building and the problems we have here. I don’t think the Board has.

McCann: The point is we will have this information in as good a shape as possible. If the Board is not satisfied with the information at that time we will not accept it. Let’s not worry about it until we get to that point. Lawrence’s committee will be very motivated to get it to us. If we are uncomfortable with what we get, we won’t move on it.

Bauer: Is inclined to go ahead with it. On the other hand there may be something that comes up in one of the reports and we can’t overlook those and rush into something.

Lawrence: That is exactly what happened with the last proposal. Lawrence was prepared to go ahead with it, but all of the sudden there were unforeseen circumstances.

Youngblood: Everything thus far has indicated that whether to proceed with this is a no brainer. This is the only proposal we have that doesn’t have us going out with hat in hand to our membership. With any other proposal, we would have some serious fundraising questions to deal with. Are the costs of renovating on the conservative side? Is it likely to run considerably over?

Lawrence: We have asked for conservative figures. The figures the Board heard on the proposal in Portland when we finally got them were over our heads. Lawrence did not feel it would have been as costly as the figures he gave us, but every way to shave the costs and stretch it out and finance it were beyond our means. We couldn’t make it work. Other members of the committee looked at other avenues to make it work. We have some very experienced people on this committee, both in real estate and in finance. The architect has been providing us what we asked for in very conservative figures. He has also pointed out to us those areas that are soft and need to be scrutinized very carefully. He has built in inflation factors for any delays that might cause us longer time to achieve the aims. Lawrence has been pleased with the architect.

Peterson: It is imperative that all of us who are going to be involved in voting get to know all of the issues well before we start the meeting. That definitely applies to the APRL Board that has up to this time not been formally included. Peterson requested President McCann communicate with Phil Bansner, the President of the Board of the APRL, and request he convene a meeting of the Trustees Board. Make arrangements to send equivalent material to him.

Peterson: Skinner hasn’t even been up to see the facility. He doesn’t even know the questions we have been asking. Let’s do this formally and ask the APRL President to convene the Board of Trustees in Providence.

Bauer: Youngblood had some of the same concerns about what might be hidden in there that Bauer had before seeing the interior of the building. Having seen the inside where almost everything is stripped out to the bare walls, there may still be something we are not aware of, but Bauer is not as concerned as he once was.

Lamb: Tom Brown, the architect for the initial expansion committee, had priced that for us.

Morison: Wondered if we had the numbers on that proposal without going back and having someone produce them for us.

Lawrence: That is the easiest one to cost because that is a straight dollars per square foot estimate.

Peter Martin: What sort of time frame are we looking at in terms of renovation of the building and being able to sell this building? Are we looking at 2002?

Lamb: The architect says it will take 18 months, Lamb believed it would take two years. We have proposals from people who would like to buy our present building now with some money down and the understanding we could stay in it as long as we needed provided we made the commitment. Dealing in commercial real estate, that is the kind of deal the broker can get for us.

Boehret: This deal is not going to last forever. What is the window of opportunity before we make a decision?

Lawrence: They have not given us a deadline. They have given us every single scrap we have asked them to do and we keep not doing anything. We keep telling them we can’t do anything until the Board makes a decision. They ask what they need to do to get the Board to make a decision. We asked they bring the Board there to show them. At a certain point they are going to expect something in the way of an indication that either there is interest, or that the Board is not prepared to make a decision. They have two other options, neither of which is as attractive to them, but they have to do something. They missed this year’s April deadline to file for historic designation because they were in the process of negotiating what was the best prospect. The deadline slipped past them, so they have lost a year as far as they are concerned.

Boehret: Our present building is inadequate and deteriorating more and more rapidly. What happens if this building falls down around our heads in three months, six months, or a year, and we are still fooling around with making a decision about moving.

McCann: Understands Lawrence’s frustration and shares it, but we have to remember this is a nonprofit Society. We have eleven board members. None of us live here. We are from all over the country. We don’t have lots of money and we don’t meet like a corporate board once a month. It is a process to get us all together. There are also two separate organizations that have to be dealt with, but we are coming to a point in August in Providence. Lawrence will get all the information we need together and the Boards will be able to sit down and make a decision. It is only two months away. This will not be an endless process.

Youngblood: The list of contingencies that Lamb and Lawrence brought in mirror, to some extent, Klug’s list. The Bellefonte people have agreed to fulfilling all those contingencies.

Lawrence: We can get the commitments in writing. They are not going to demolish their emergency operations center overnight, but they understand we don’t want it there. They are prepared to work it out.

Youngblood: One big benefit about being in Bellefonte is that while it is two miles from the I-99 exchange, it is also two miles from the I-80 interchange. There are two Interstates there.

Tony Wawrukiewicz: The discussion has been superb. It has answered all my questions. The only one I have is how far is it from the airport to Bellefonte?

Wawrukiewicz: So it is almost as far from the airport to Bellefonte as it is from the airport to State College.

Lawrence: As part of the I-99 planning there is supposed to be some improved access that should benefit both ends of the airport’s constituency.

Tom Kurtz: (Kurtz is Manager of Patton Township where the present building is located and is also an APS member.) In many ways Kurtz would be saddened to lose the Society, but the proposal is intriguing. The questions are important. The list of questions that was put out earlier and added to is an excellent set of questions. The idea of having a business plan with all the proposals is a very good one. Kurtz encouraged the Board to go ahead with that kind of analysis.

Lawrence has stated that the architect, Bob Hoffmann, is one of the most imaginative in central Pennsylvania. That was Kurtz’s experience as well. You have selected a top notch architect for your project.

We would be sad to lose the APS in Patton Township, but if the proposal works for you we would be supportive.

Lamb: Kurtz has been a member of the Society for a long time and has been very supportive. One of the difficult things if we were to leave would be leaving the kind of support we have gotten from Kurtz.

Bauer: If we go ahead with this project, we will need an administrator within the Society to handle all the paperwork. We will have to look internally at how we will handle that and still continue to operate the Society at its normal efficiency.

McCann: Urged the APS and APRL Board members to contact Lawrence or Lamb if they thought of any other information or documents they needed to see prior to our next meeting in Providence.

Triggle: Klug’s list talks about the various samplings that were done. Triggle said several of the people she spoke with last evening indicated no brick core samples had been done. It would be appropriate to have that done.

Peterson: We owe a debt to Lawrence and the committee for digging all of this out, perhaps more enthusiastically than some of us would agree with. The committee has done a fine job and it has a heavy charter before our meeting in Providence.

McCann: Concurred. Lawrence has done an excellent job. It has been a frustrating one.

Lawrence: Has done his best to build a consensus among his committee, but this is a democratic organization. We do our best to explore the possibilities. Lawrence will not have a vote. He is a vigorous advocate but he will present everything. He will come back with answers that will satisfy both him and those who asked the questions. Then it will be time to make a decision.