Summit County is hoping to assure the future of the financially troubled nonprofit Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron, by postponing annual loan payments and providing a $102,000 grant.
Legislation — introduced Monday at a Summit County Council meeting — would defer the $86,739 annual loan payment for the institute’s downtown headquarters for the next five years. The money would not have to be paid until 2033.
The $102,000 grant for the organization — which began about eight years ago with much fanfare and works to innovate and develop medical-related products — is proposed in separate legislation. Both proposals are backed by Summit County Executive Russ Pry.
“Russ [Pry] wanted to really show [the county’s] commitment to continuing the mission down there,” said Pry’s chief of staff, Jason Dodson.
There is talk of extending the $102,000 grant for an additional four years.
The proposed loan deferments would allow the BioInnovation Institute to defer rental payments for the three floors which constitute the institute’s headquarters at 47 N. Main St. in Akron, just south of Perkins Street.
The county’s proposed legislation comes as the institute is trying to reinvent itself.
After slashing its staff from 40 to eight last year, ABIA officials in October said the group needed a $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to move forward with a new, sustainable business model. The nonprofit is now focusing on its medical-device product engineering and innovation services plus training health-care workers through its mock hospital and advanced simulation equipment.
ABIA spokesman Scott Rainone said last month that the request to the Knight Foundation “was met very positively, and ABIA leaders have been working to finalize some requirements.”
The institute began in 2008. Four years later, it moved into its roughly $13 million headquarters offices to renovated space within the former Summit County Job & Family Services at 47 N. Main. (The institute had been housed nearby in the United building on Main and Market streets downtown.)
Summit County played a big role in getting the ABIA headquarters project started, selling the 47 N. Main building for about $2.5 million to the Development Finance Authority of Summit County. The authority is an economic development arm of county government.
The county continued to use three floors of the six-story building, paying rent to the Development Finance Authority. (The bulk of the institute has been housed in the bottom three floors and basement.)
Earlier this year, the county vacated the three floors, moving Job & Family Services offices to the renovated Triangle Building at 1180 S. Main St. in Akron, south of downtown.
The plan had been for the BioInnovation Institute to use or sub-lease the three floors the county vacated, with the rent going to the building owner, the Development Finance Authority.
The authority would then apply rent payments to the loan it got from the county to buy the building.
Austen BioInnovation Institute is not ready to use the additional space, or sub-lease it, said Dodson and Brian Nelsen, the county’s budget and finance director. So Pry is proposing deferring payments due under the note, Dodson and Nelsen said.
Concerning the $102,000 grant, it would go toward repaying a state Research and Development loan for the institute.
Nelsen noted the county guaranteed both the state loan and a bond for the institute. Debt service — paid with money from the institute — totals about $700,000 a year.
“Proactively helping the ABIA is certainly in the county’s best long-term financial interest,” Nelsen said.
The two pieces of legislation are to be discussed in a county committee meeting April 4.
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. You can follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com.