Brushy Lake Park visitors can rent fun with kayaks

Sallisaw City Commissioners have approved a master services agreement between the city and Rent Fun LLC of Northville, Mich., for the placement of a kiosk for kayaks at Brushy Lake Park.

In green lighting the venture last week, the commissioners paved the way for adding recreational activities for visitors to the park and lake north of Sallisaw.

After an initial investment from the city, there is no additional cost. Rent Fun maintains the equipment and the kiosk, handles billing and liability waivers, and sends the city a check at convenient intervals. The city is also included in the company’s liability insurance pool at no cost.

Using conservative numbers, City Manager Brian Heverly said the city should see a return on investment in seven to eight years with a 50/50 revenue-sharing agreement.

This is the first step in expanded services and amenities for Brushy Lake Park visitors.

“This is a turnkey operation for $35,000 for an eight-bay system. We’re partnering with Rent Fun, in effect,” Heverly said.

“What they do, they come in, they place a solar- powered large locker system, the rental process is app-driven, you sign a liability waiver and, oh, by the way, we are now part of Rent Fun’s liability pool at no cost. This is basically in perpetuity.”

The best part is that the city has no responsibilities for the operation of the kiosk or the equipment.

“They, Rent Fun, are responsible for maintaining the locker system, they’re responsible for maintaining the equipment, they’re responsible for recovering any equipment that may be stolen or de- stroyed and replacing that. They have a regional maintenance guy that’s on call 24/7. They’re responsible for all maintenance and upkeep of the system,” Heverly told the commissioners.

“We looked at three different options. Rent Fun was one. We looked at Wheneverwatersports. com. They’re almost exact-same model, a little different equipment, a little different setup, but almost exact-same business model. However, their revenue was 80/20, and would take us closer to 10 years to see a return on our investment,” Heverly explained.

“The third option is we would buy the kiosk itself, then we would run the kiosk, we would have to figure out how to integrate the billing, liability would be on us, equipment would be on us, maintenance of that equipment would be on us. That was one course of action we wrote off very quickly,” Heverly said.

For Rent Fun and Wheneverwatersports “both of business here in Oklahoma, but Rent Fun is more appealing from a business standpoint, 50/50 revenue sharing. And we can mix paddle boards and kayaks. At any time, if we find that we’re making money there [like] gangbusters and people are waiting for these things, then we can always approach them and get more. Obviously we’ll pay for those, but we can get more. It is hands-off from us. They send us a check either quarterly, monthly, whatever’s convenient for us, they send us a check at the end of that.”

Heverly said Randy Jones, who is camp host at Brushy Creek Lake Camp, “loves the idea. It’s just more amenities up there, something else for folks to do.”

“We really think this will appeal to locals who may have it (equipment) but don’t want to pile it up and lug it to the lake every week, and those folks who travel and don’t have room to bring it with them.”

Heverly said about $20 per hour rental “is fairly universal, unless you go to, I believe they’ve got some places on beaches on the East Coast where they’re charging $30 an hour. But everybody local is pretty much $20 an hour. $20 seems to be the majority price point for an hour. Sounds really high, and I thought so, too, but everybody’s $20 an hour,” Heverly said.

Rent Fun also offers annual memberships, Heverly said, “so if you want to pay $100, that is a Rent Fun pass. You can take that $100 and rent it for as long as you want to, wherever you want to where Rent Fun has a kiosk, and any type of Rent Fun kiosk, because they do more than kayaks. That $100 would get you access to anything they have, and anywhere they have it.”

Heverly said Rent Fun will also brand the app for the city, so when customers log on, there’ll be a Sallisaw-specific application. “We’ll brand that in orange, black and white,” he said.

Other options explored/quotes received included:

• The city purchasing kiosk and operating, equipping and maintaining it, which would result in challenges with billing and equipment/ maintenance costs, as well as the city would need its own liability solution, which made this unsuitable/unsustainable

• Wheneverwatersports.com offers a $25,000 initial investment with similar operations as Rent. fun, however revenue sharing is a 80/20 split and return on investment (ROI) is more than 10 to 11 years, despite lower initial cost and reduced revenue flow once the ROI is achieved ($4,000/year vs. $7,000/year).

Brushy Lake Park has $18,000 budgeted, with the remaining amount paid from the Parks Department, Heverly said. The kiosk will be installed before June 1.