R2000-246 AUTHORIZING EXECUTION OF AGREEMENT

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a DECATUR PUBLIC LIBRARY 130 N. Franklin Street Decatur, IL 62523 October 30, 2000 Mr. Steve Garman Decatur City Manager City of Decatur One Gary K. Anderson Plaza Decatur, IL 62523 Re: Development of Library Lease Dear Mr. Garman: As you know, the Decatur Public Library ("Library") has been in its new home for just over one year. The intent of the Library when it acquired the current building was to lease a portion of the space to tenants. The income received from the leasing of various areas would supplement the current Library budget. Fortunately, we were able to lease the"old garage"to the Real Estate Investors of Decatur, LLC who expended a great deal of money in making that facility attractive to tenants. We believe that this has been successful for both the Library and the City of Decatur("City") since much of the space being leased is retail in nature and continues to generate sales t�revenue for the City. We hope to continue to do the same type of thing in the remaining portion of the Library building that is currently not needed for Library functions. This space consists of approximately 36,000 square feet on the south portion of the upper floor of the Library. We have entered into a lease agreement with a person who wishes to open a retail establishment in approximately 5;000 square feet of that leasable space. As part of that, we need to make some renovations to this side of the building to make it habitable. We recently had a bid process by which bids were received to complete some basic work in order to create an atmosphere appropriate for the opening of this retail establishment. The funds for the development of this portion of the building are not available within the budget of the Library itself. Therefore, we had sought funds through borrowings to be made by the Library to be repaid from the rents. The former Library Director, John Moorman, had some conversations with Beth Couter at the City. During their discussions we learned that it may be possible for the City to actually loan the Library the funds at a reasonable interest rate and to be amortized over a period of time sufficient for the Library to pay for the renovations from the rents being earned through the lease of this space. As you know, everything always costs more than one anticipates, but we feel we can still move forward with this project. The purpose of my letter is to request from the City of Decatur a loan to be amortized over a period of eight(8)years to enable us to complete the construction for this proposed tenant.