Topeka ? Legislators want to take a closer look at a lease agreement by the Department of Wildlife and Parks for a property in northwest Topeka.

Republicans say the lease raises questions about the use of state funds and whether it is a wise investment by the state agency, which uses the property as its northeast Kansas headquarters. The Joint Committee on State Building Construction has a hearing scheduled Thursday.

Wildlife and Parks has plans to purchase the building, formerly used by the now-departed Menninger Clinic. The agency expects to spend $294,000 for rent and improvements to the 9,800-foot building by next summer. The property is valued by the Shawnee County appraiser at $419,500.

“There are some pretty serious questions about what happened out there,” said Rep. Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Chris Tymeson, the agency’s chief legal counsel, defended the lease agreement.

“If we’re going to have it long term, we’ve got to have a facility that works,” he said.

Mike Hayden, secretary of Wildlife and Parks, signed a lease agreement on the property in March 2004, two days after the property was purchased from the Menninger Clinic by a group of local investors. The property is owned by River Ridge Estates of Topeka.

The state is waiting for 80 acres of land on the former Menninger campus to be donated for use as a state park near the leased building.

Wildlife and Parks paid rent of $26,000 per year on a smaller building near S.W. 29th and Gage. It now pays $92,000 on the new one and has spent $100,000 to remodel it.

Wildlife and Parks is in the process of buying the property.