By Bryan Jaffe

ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN --- The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners approved a new lease for O’Brien Realty that ends the free rent deal given them by the previous board under Julie Randall and first reported on by ST. MARY’S TODAY.

The realty firm, one of the area’s largest, is located in the county owned building in front of the Air Navy museum in Lexington Park. The new lease will require $3,000 in rent monthly for the 4,000 square foot space O’Brien occupies. It is a month to month lease.

In addition to the rent, O’Brien will still be required to pay the utility bill for the entire building, with the accounting firm in the same building picking up it’s own phone costs.

According to Joyce Malone, St. Mary’s Real Property manager, O’Brien will be moving out of the county owned space in June. She said that the lease is a new lease with a new rental fee and replaces the old one which expired on the 1^st of February.

St. Mary’s Commissioner Larry Jarboe asked what the cost per square foot was for the building, and was told it is $8.50 per year. Malone also explained that while O’Brien was paying less per square foot than the accounting firm sharing the building, the other firm is not paying utilities bringing the costs closer in line.

"It’s not a perfect lease, but it’s not a perfect world," St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners President Tom McKay (R. Hollywood) told ST. MARY’S TODAY. "But it’s a lot better than what the county was getting before."

McKay explained that while the other firm in the building pays a higher rate per square foot, $13.50 per year, this is not unusual for the real estate market. "Paying more per square foot for 400 than for 4000 is typical in the marketplace."

One vendor on Rt. 235 pays an annual rate of $20 per square foot, and Millison Developing in Lexington park averages a range of $10 to $18 per square foot for office space.

McKay said that adding the utility rate for O’Brien to the rent actually pushes the cost up to 10.25 per square foot, which he said is a lot better than what the county was getting before.

"On the initial lease, the county got a raw deal," McKay said. "Now the county got a fair deal, not a great deal, we didn’t hit a homerun with it, but it’s better than nothing."

"The new lease is a response to the situation which we became aware of because of ST. MARY’S TODAY," said St. Mary’s Commissioner Larry Jarboe (R. Golden Beach). "Unfortunately, there is no way to collect retroactively, we have to live by the previous agreement even if it was bad."

Jarboe said that he and the board acted quickly to respond to the situation, and that now it has been fixed within a month of first coming to light.

According to Tom McKay, the plans for the building eventually include tearing it down to build a new museum at that site. He said that it was better for the county to get what it can now than to have to put the cost of renovation into the building to rent it out again.