The Board of Regents approved a 99-year lease with Friends of the Lost River Cave Inc. for the Lost River Cave property on Thursday.

The board also approved selling the property adjacent to the cave, where the visitor center is located, to the nonprofit organization for $1.

The property is valued at $275,000.

Friends’ goal is to preserve the Lost River Cave area, and cave tours are the primary source of money for the organization’s operations.

To build a new visitor center, the organization needs a bank loan, but needed a stronger lease than the year-to-year lease they had been signing with Western to get a loan.

General Counsel Deborah Wilkins said Western decided to extend the lease rather than sell the entire property to the organization.

“They need to have some property interest,” she said. “A 99-year lease ties it up pretty tight.”

The Lost River Cave and Valley property was given to Western as a gift in 1986.

Friends leases the property for $1 per year and manages the cave and the valley for Western.

Rhoella Lansden, executive director for Friends, said the Lost River Cave property covers 68 acres and Western owns about 22 acres of that, including the cave and the valley.

The Lost River Cave tour brought in $700,000 last year.

“The Friends of the Lost River Cave Inc. have outgrown the present visitor center,” Lansden said.

Western’s geography, geology and recreation departments are a few of the departments that use the cave and valley for educational and research purposes.

Raymond Poff, associate professor of recreation administration, said students involved in a nonprofit administration program called American Humanics worked with Friends on a project to remove invasive plant species from the valley this year.

The students reviewed proposals for student help from various nonprofit organizations and chose Lost River Cave.

“Through the proposal project, the nonprofit organizations are identifying a need that they have and our students are able to address a need in the community,” Poff said.

It was a much more valuable experience than the students making up a project, he said.

Lansden said they will use the current visitor center for educational programs focused on environmental education.

The organization is currently taking bids for the bank loan.

Reach Holly Brown at news@chherald.com.