For Rent: SMC's facilities generate revenue

From television film crews to small private high schools, there is a lot of interest in renting out Santa Monica College's facilities.

Linda Sullivan, Associate Dean of Facilities Programming, decides who rents out the facilities of Santa Monica College, and how much they should pay.

The top three facilities used on campus are Santa Monica College's football field, Corsair gymnasium, and the parking structure.

The parking structure is rented out by production studio's film crews, such as network television shows like Modern Family. The gymnasium is rented out for basketball, volleyball, table tennis and recreational use for the public.

Between these two facilities, the school intakes about $140,000 in revenue annually.

The football field is known to collect the most earnings of the three venues rented out. The price of rental is between $10,000 and $14,000 a day, depending on how many hours the field is rented for.

Private high schools who do not have fields of their own rent SMC's field for practices and home games. Saint Monica Catholic High School most regularly uses the Corsair Field.

"Saint Monica's wants more home games and practices than we would actually like to give them," Sullivan said.

Saint Monica's rented Corsair field nine times in the 2013-2014 season, adding up to anywhere from $60,000 to $126,000 for their last football season alone.

Facility rental revenue goes into paying expenses from what Sullivan calls "the black pit of the district." This "black-pit" includes: facility rental fees, events staff overtime, campus police overtime, grounds dept. overtime, custodial dept. overtime, telecom dept. overtime, athletics, and also the athletics overtime.

This explains the high prices to rent out facilities such as the football field, gymnasium and the parking lots. While Santa Monica College does see revenue from renting out their facilities, a large cut of that is spent on overtime staffing these private events.

Other facilities on campus come with different fees and rules for rentals. The main example of this is the Broad Stage, whose facility hosts their own private rental business.

The revenue generated by the Broad Stage go towards SMC's performance arts programs, such as the music and dance departments.

The Broad Stage is more expensive than other facilities, for rental fees include the cost of stage hands to work the theater equipment. When it comes to revenue collected by the Broad Stage only, about 10 percent goes to the actual rental fee. The rest goes towards covering the stage workers' overtime.