For the past seven months, Madison Township native Ladena Gough and her fiance James Pemberton had envisioned their May 16 wedding inside Bill Stanton Community Park’s echoing chapel with a campfire smorgasbord afterward.
A Madison Township letter sent to the Cincinnati couple last week has now dashed their dream.
The couple’s wedding ceremony is one of 25 park events — many of them weddings — that have been impacted one way or another since April 29 when Compass Pointe, the private company managing the township-owned park and former Catholic Diocese camp, ended its operations.
Since April, the company and Madison Township trustees have been negotiating a termination agreement sparked by unpaid utility bills, lease compensation, property taxes and liability insurance by the company. Soon after Compass Pointe left the park at 5585 Chapel Road, trustees promised event planners that the township would honor all scheduled events at their own loss.
But with Compass Pointe gone, planners had lost their catering service, liquor license-approved bar service and certainty over their nonrefundable deposits — money that was never handed over to the township.
The founder of Compass Pointe, Pete Spittler, hasn’t returned interview requests since April 14, when trustees met at a special meeting to issue a default notice against the company. The News-Herald made several attempts to reach Spittler for an interview this week by e-mail and phone, but none were returned.
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Since then, the township has hosted 10 events, with nine more to go through the end of this year, said Madison Township Administrator Lee Bodnar. In addition, planners canceled five events at the park since the turnover. The Cincinnati couple’s wedding has been the only event township trustees have canceled themselves, issuing the couple a letter July 16.
“Due to some negative comments made to us over the past few weeks by individuals using the basic facilities, we did a thorough review of the buildings and grounds,” a portion of the letter read, which was signed by all three trustees. “After closely inspecting the banquet hall facility, cabins and wedding chapel, we find them to be in an unacceptable, and even dangerous condition to rent out for future events.”
Pemberton told The News-Herald by phone this week that he got that letter a few days after speaking to Bodnar, who reassured him that the wedding date was still going to happen.
“We thought everything was going to be taken care of, and we’re now stuck trying to find a venue and caterer within 10 months,” Pemberton told The News-Herald by phone this week. “It is at least doubling our budget.”
Bodnar said the Cincinnati couple’s wedding was targeted for cancellation because it was the only event scheduled in 2015, and township leaders were concerned what new challenges would meet the park and its facilities on the other side of winter.
“I mean this, no one wants to rain on someone’s parade,” Bodnar said. “If there was a way to move forward on this, we would have.”
Pemberton said he wished Bodnar would’ve called him back about the news before he read it in a letter.
Bodnar said he didn’t understand why Spittler scheduled a wedding on Stanton Park’s calendar when — by April 4 — both sides knew the lease agreement was headed to termination.
Pemberton said Spittler never warned him about a possible termination when he was placing his $750 deposit.
“He said he thought he was walking into a meeting for an extended lease agreement” and found out it was for termination, Pemberton said, recalling a phone conversation he had with Spittler sometime after Compass Pointe closed down its operations.
After the township canceled the Cincinnati couple’s wedding reservation, Pemberton said he reached Spittler by phone and asked what will be done with his $775 deposit. Spittler told him a refund check should reach him in the mail by July 25.
Bodnar also received notice of the deposit being refunded to the couple. However, he said it is the only refund he is aware of by Compass Pointe.
While the township finishes up the remaining nine events at Stanton Park, trustees have closed off any new events getting scheduled in, even for events this year. In late June, Madison Township Fiscal Officer Terry Gerred-Ditchcreek requested the township take on new events and generate revenue to pay for the park’s bills and repairs. But after finding rotten wooden frames, stained carpet, poorly insulated doors, cracked glass windows, peeling paint and a pavilion steadily eroding out into Lake Erie, trustees decided to hold off on scheduling new events for the same reason they canceled the Cincinnati couple’s wedding date, Bodnar said.
“This was a camp and it still has some camp flavor,” Bodnar said. “We call it a park, we call it Stanton Park, but it doesn’t really fit the model of a park ... it is a unique piece of property with some unique amenities. It is just unfortunate those amenities, over the decades of lack of maintenance, have gotten to the condition they are in currently.”
Bodnar said the township has $477,000 of federal funding targeted for shoreline erosion control, but no funding source toward a maintenance program for the park’s three rental properties and 11 other structures. One option trustees have discussed is a park district funded by its own levy, but they’re holding off any action until a termination agreement is approved by Compass Pointe.
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