The owners of the Alpine Business Center on Wednesday asked the Flathead County commissioners for a two-year lease on the building that houses the Agency on Aging.

They also offered to sell the county the entire complex of buildings for $900,000.

“Because of aging family members we’ve decided we might want to sell the facility,” said Charles Lapp, one of the owners of Alpine Business Center. “It’s an opportunity we want to explore right now.”

The property includes the barn-shaped building the Agency on Aging has used for a decade, plus two adjacent buildings and 20 storage units on three acres. The buildings offer a total of 17,000 square feet of finished space in a campus setting.

The proposal from Alpine Business Center owners comes on the heels of another offer to sell the county a building and property to use for the Agency on Aging.

Dr. Shane Hill, owner of MedNorth Urgent Care and the managing partner of Glacier Life Sciences, recently approached the commissioners about buying the former 12,500-square-foot Montana Homefitters furniture building north of Kalispell where his company is planning to develop a senior living community.

Hill said the county could either buy the building as is for $935,000 or lease the building with an option to buy.

The commissioners have been pondering how to move forward with a new facility for the Agency on Aging, which has outgrown the leased building at Alpine Business Center on Kelly Road. Money for a new building is in the county’s capital improvements budget for 2015, but no decision has been made yet.

Ten years ago the county invested about $50,000 to improve the building so that the various aging services could operate there on a temporary basis.

Though the county had been leasing the former auction barn under two-year contracts, it has been leasing it recently on a month-by-month basis for a total of $52,000 a year.

Lapp said he and his business partners would like the county to sign a two-year lease for the current AOA building because the requested installation of snow guards on the metal roof is a modification that will substantially change the design of how the roof system is supposed to function.

“While we are willing to install these snow breaks at our expense, we are requesting a two-year lease commitment from the county,” Lapp said. “This will ascertain that the tenant requesting these modifications will be the one enjoying them ... quite frankly they [the snow guards] probably would come down once the tenant is gone.”

Lapp said the current monthly lease rate of $4,360 would be acceptable for the two-year period.

He also asked the county to take over winter maintenance of the parking lot because the county maintenance department “is in a much better position of knowing what is expected and how to address those expectations.”

The commissioners did not discuss Alpine Business Center’s proposal.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.