The letter in the Friday, Feb. 22 Post, “OU ‘outwitted’ when it comes to HDL Center,” warrants a response in order to clarify the university’s history and present situation with that building. During my service as an associate provost in the 1990s, I coordinated negotiation of our original lease agreement with HDL, so I have some first-hand knowledge of these matters.

Yes, the university owned this building and sold it to Harold Laughlin, but that transaction occurred many years ago in the wake of a mid-1970s budget crisis when enrollment on the Athens campus plummeted. The university suddenly had a great deal of surplus space, much of it in residence halls, and dollars were still flowing out the door to pay off the debt for constructing those facilities. We had to do something with the space, i.e., use it or get rid of it.  The present homes of the Russ College, College of Osteopathic Medicine and Department of Biological Sciences in former residence halls and the buildings demolished or sold in that era are the legacy of that crisis.

As the university recovered and grew during the 1980s and 1990s, usable space in our buildings gradually became a very scarce resource. HDL offered an opportunity to move the Finance Division from Scott Quad and consolidate the communication network services operations of the IT Division. The owner was renovating an empty warehouse into an office complex (something considerably more complicated than the “quickie remodel” suggested in the letter). The cost of the lease over a 10-year period was far less than the cost of renovating and operating facilities at the only other plausible location, namely, the Ridges. If I recall accurately, the market at that time for leased space in Athens ranged from about $6 (rough, unrenovated space) to $18 (premium commercial space) per square foot. Our lease agreement landed in just about the middle of that range.  

I cannot say that HDL actually is worth $9.25 million, but our executives would not make this offer (nor would the state’s Department of Administrative Services approve it) if the price were out of line with current appraisals of the property’s value. As for the cost of relocating to the Ridges, I can say that what was true 10 years ago is still true today. I do not know what is included in the estimate of $33 million, but even a crude estimate would put the cost at $25 million or more, and this does not include greater operating costs and other factors that we would confront on the Ridges. For example, where, how and for how much would one replace our spaces in the HDL Center parking lot? By any measure, getting our HDL operations up to the Ridges would far more expensive than the HDL purchase.

Tom Daniels is a professor of communication studies.