For just $3 million, you can start bidding to own your very own scenic college in Vermont. Green Mountain College faced financial ruin in 2019 and ended up shutting down the campus at the end of the spring 2019 semester.
Now, it’s for sale to the highest bidder…
While universities across the country are pondering how to safely return to school this fall amid the coronavirus pandemic, the small private college in Vermont is just trying to find someone to buy the property.
After 185 years, Green Mountain College couldn’t draw enough students nor find a business partner with an interest in education to help it stay afloat.
College leaders teamed up with Prescott College in Arizona to help transfer its students so they could continue working on their degrees. Sterling College in Vermont also stepped up to help.
The 155-acre Poultney property, appraised in 2016 for $20,000,000, is simply stunning with what’s described as classic New England dormitory buildings with room for 654 students.
There is a roomy 400-seat auditorium, two elaborate fine arts studios and galleries, an organic working farm with a barn and greenhouse, and a campus-wide wood-fueled biomass steam heat system built in 2010 for $5.8 million.
There are 22 buildings in total, many constructed out of sturdy high-end brick and slate, that boast a combined 447,000 square feet.
There are seven dormitory buildings, three mixed-use buildings, three administrative buildings, three single-family homes, a three-story library, a gym and field house, and the maintenance shop.
There’s a modern cafeteria equipped with a commercial kitchen, an indoor pool and fitness center, and athletic fields. The gorgeous campus even received a perfect “green rating” by Princeton Review’s Green Honor Roll.
Thomas Bailey, a college trustee and project manager with Verdolino & Lowey, a Massachusetts accounting firm that oversees the property, said there has been some interest, but no concrete buyers.
“There’s been a substantial amount of interest, but there hasn’t been anybody who has stepped up and said ‘We want to take it. We’re willing to pay X amount of money, and we have the financing to support that.”
The firm hired Maltz Auctions, a company based in Central Islip, New York, to solicit “stalking horse” bids, initial bids that set a minimum price, for an auction scheduled for Aug. 18. Tours of the property are being scheduled now. Pre-auction offers will be considered.
“The last thing anybody wants is an empty campus with a fence around it. What we want is somebody to buy it and to maintain it. And the best way we could think to do that is to have someone like Maltz go out and beat the bushes with their substantial contacts to get people in who are willing to purchase the property.”
Sadly, Vermont has seen four colleges close their doors in just two years’ time. The campuses have been virtually impossible to sell.
Green Mountain College is still responsible for a loan from the USDA worth nearly $20 million. The school made its annual payment in April 2019, after announcing it would close.
But it couldn’t pay what was due this April. So now it’s technically in default on the loan, according to Bailey.
Bailey said it’s unclear at this point what the next steps will be if the auction can’t secure a buyer.
The college’s closure affected more than just staff and students. The ripple effect was felt beyond campus, particularly in the town of Poultney with a population of 3,339, noted Bob Allen, the college’s former president.
“Increasingly students want to go to schools in cities and not rural areas.”
Green Mountain College was Poultney’s top employer with more than 150 faculty and staff. Nearly all of the college’s professors have secured other jobs and moved away. Property values in town have plummeted.
The once-bustling college that felt more like an extended family now sits like a ghost town below the foothills of the Adirondacks. If the price is right, it could be yours.
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