Orange Beach council members will vote today on purchasing The Wharf Conference Center to be used as a civic center.

The special called council meeting will take place at 5 p.m. in council chambers.

Council members and city staff have spent the past two weeks doing due diligence and hearing from the public and the business community regarding the purchase.

For the second week in a row, an open house was held prior to Tuesday’s work session, giving the public an opportunity to tour the facility and ask questions.

“We have spent literally hundreds and hundreds of hours studying this facility, the documents behind it, and the numbers behind the building,” said Al Bradley, chairman of the city’s finance committee.

Bradley complimented members of the staff for the work they have done related to the proposed purchase.

“We have some talented people that work for us,” Bradley said. “ They have crawled all over this building, they have been on the roof, and they have seen the foundation. We have a third-party structural engineering report, we have a third-party environmental phase one report and have done surveys.”

According to Bradley, the city has been looking into the project since Aug. 6 of last year.

Bradley told council members that one of the things that made the purchase special was the built-in lease with Student Life, a Christian based organization that will host youth conferences, during the months of June and July.

“Last summer they brought 12,000 students to our city. They fill up condos and they fill up restaurants. They are spending money.”

Student life will lease the building for $150,000 per year and Bradley said that if the building were to remain empty the other 10 months of the year, operating costs would only be $180,000.

“It doesn’t take much, in terms of other leases, for this facility to operate at a break even level.”

Other organizations that have already contacted the city about possibly using the facility include Columbia Southern University, Baldwin County Board of Education, three Mardi Gras groups, several churches, the Orange Beach Garden Club, the Michigan Snowbird Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

City Administrator Ken Grimes said that after eight hours of open house and two weeks of discussion during council meetings, the public appears to be overwhelmingly in support.

“We had comment cards available during the open house for the past two weeks. In the first week we had only two cards that were in opposition and five that where undecided, and that is understandable because there were still questions to be answered,” Grimes said. “This week we received no comments in opposition. In all, we collected 97 comments and 90 of them were in favor of making the purchase.”

Randy Hall, CEO of Student Life also addressed the council on Tuesday. Hall, whose organization hosts more than 60,000 teenagers at their 50 yearly events, said that he hopes to see his Orange Beach events grow, and to be able to utilize the facility even more.

“When we have a full event, we will rent about 300 condos per night from nine different properties. We do not provide food, which means they will go to Winn Dixie or Bruno’s and buy all their groceries.”

Hall said that while they currently used the facility from June 1 through July 12, he hopes to work out a long-term contract on the facility for the entire months of June and July.

Mayor Tony Kennon said that while the long-term lease with Student Life was not a reason to buy the building, he would hate to see the organization move to another location.

“If Student Life leaves Orange Beach, we would lose, according to CVB statistics, approximately $150,000 per year in tax revenue,” Kennon said. “They generate about $3 million in economic stimulus for the community.”