By LESLEE KULBA

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The Pack Place Board of Trustees on April 9 agreed to accept an offer from Asheville City Council to extend Pack Place’s current lease for 60 days to allow more time to possibly work out problems between the two parties. 

The move came as board supporters and council critics John Miall and Ken Michalove continued to make appearances at council meetings with complaints about the city’s relationship with the Asheville Art Museum.

After council conferred on the lease issue late April 8, Vice Mayor Marc Hunt, who serves as council’s liaison to the Pack Place board, recommended accepting the city’s lease extension offer.

During that time, the city expects Pack Place’s subtenants to work out the legal details of separate leases to be signed directly with the city. The current subtenants are the Asheville Art Museum, the Diana Wortham Theatre and the Coburn Earth Science Museum.

Under the city’s plan, Pack Place’s board would be reduced to figurehead status.

Rumblings and appearances of lawyers here and there have hinted that efforts for continuing the current lease beyond the extended termination date of July 31 are afoot. Pack Place’s attorneys have said the city’s offer, as broached by Hunt, was too informal to be legally enforceable.

Problems first came to the public’s attention a year ago, when Michalove, a former Asheville mayor, accused then-Vice Mayor Esther Manheimer, then-Councilman Hunt and City Manager Gary Jackson of “ethics violations.”

Michalove, along with Miall, who was running against Manheimer in the mayoral race at the time, opposed a $2 million grant the city made to the museum, after raising taxes to cover it. Michalove argued the museum’s free-rent arrangement should be enough of a subsidy for a single nonprofit.

The city owns the land that is home to Pack Place. Pack Place, in turn, pays the city $10 per year. The 10-year lease was set to expire May 31, and earlier this year, Jackson sent a letter to the Pack Place board that Miall and Michalove believe made false claims in order to take advantage of a reversion clause.

According to the terms of the lease agreement, the city may seize control of the Pack Place building in the event it may be deemed to be falling into disrepair. In his letter, Jackson demanded that Pack Place pay the city $800,000 for negligently deferred maintenance, or else the city would exercise its rights of reversion.

At an April special meeting, Pack Place board member Barbara Field claimed the city had stolen her “wish list” of capital improvements and spun it into “evidence” of negligence.

Both Manheimer and Hunt have referred to the interactions of the various Pack Place tenants and the city as “dysfunctional.” They said they wanted any future lease agreements to spell out funding streams and assign responsibilities for capital upkeep.

The problems appear to have started when the Health Adventure declared bankruptcy, and the Asheville Art Museum expanded into its space, even though it continued to fall short on its efforts to raise $22 million for facility upgrades.

The city already passed a $3 million bond referendum for Pack Place, and Buncombe county gave Pack Place another $385,000 just last year.