Coventry PEACE Signs New Lease With Heights Libraries

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OH — The Heights Libraries signed a new lease with Coventry PEACE Inc. this month.

The new lease is effective from Oct. 1, 2020 through Dec. 31, 2021. Coventry PEACE will have an option to renew the lease for a nine-year term and nine subsequent 10-year option terms (for a total of 99 years).

The base rent payments in the current lease will be $500 per month. If the lease is extended, rent will increase to $1,000 per month in 2022, $2,000 per month in 2023 and then increase by 3 percent for the remainder of the nine-year term, beginning in 2024.

To exercise its options to extend the lease, Coventry PEACE must maintain good standing as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The lease agreement also requires the nonprofit to submit annual financial reports and a fundraising plant to the libraries. An ex officio position on the nonprofit's board must be reserved for a member of the library's board.

“Both organizations have worked very hard to create an agreement that meets the needs of each,” said Heights Libraries Director Nancy Levin. “We hope that this new agreement will allow the tenants to stabilize their finances and take care of the building, while continuing to work on their missions. And the Library can now focus on enhancing the park and green space for the community.”

Coventry PEACE is home to several nonprofits, including Ensemble Theatre, Artful, Lake Erie Ink, Future Heights, Reaching Heights and the Heights Teacher's Union.

The Heights Libraries took control of the PEACE campus in 2018. The library system then signed individual, two-year contracts with tenants, which included several directives: to form a single, tenant-run governing entity and create a financially feasible structure for taking over the building. Those two-year-leases expired in June 2020.

Prior to this new lease, the organizations had been on a month-to-month lease program with the library. Negotiations became heated over the summer, when the libraries threatened to demolish the building if progress wasn't made on a longer-term lease.