I am not only stunned by the sale price of $100,000 for the Northfield campus, but also by the failure of the school to inform us of this amount and to make some attempt to explain and justify it. Am I being cynical in assuming they were hoping we wouldn’t find out the details before we’d made our end-of-the-year charitable contributions? Well, in my case they were right, but ultimately shortsighted. They received my contribution to the Annual Fund before I heard the news, but it will be my last until my faith that this school is being run by reasonably competent and thoughtful men and women is restored. Accepting this insulting purchase price is very possibly indefensible, but they could have and should have had the sensitivity to realize that thousands of alumni/alumnae would be further enraged to receive this news via the impersonal news media.
In answer to your questions, you can find the sale price of the Northfield core campus and reasoning behind the sale listed in the FAQ section. The link to those pages is at the top right column of this blog. The link was also included in emails and letters sent out to NMHers, but unfortunately details of the sale could not be released until the contracts were signed in December.
An excellent post and I applaud it. The execution of this process exhibits a shameful weakness on the part of this school’s leadership. I do not believe that this leadership should be comfortable in the belief that “This too shall pass.” The leadership must be called upon to account. In my opinion, there is no other way that the process of rebuilding confidence in the school’s leadership and future can begin.
Chester J. Winkowski, MH 1971
In response to rhanley;
To suggest that the school was readily forthcoming with the sale price of the Northfield campus is at best disingenuous. In truth, the details were artfully buried in the FAQ section amid many softball questions, and then worded in such a way as to deflect careful scrutiny. And to explain that there was a delay in disseminating information due to contract signing is nonsense. I received the e-mail you refer to announcing that the sale had closed, and that meant the contracts had been signed and the sale had been recorded in the public record. Your lack of candor is very troubling, and unfortunately characteristic of the way this entire situation has been handled by NMH.
Nothing to add to the above two comments except that I no
longer have much respect for the Board of Trustees and who
ever else had anything to do with the sale. The land itself
is worth far more than $100,000.
I came to this site because I thought surely the $100k sale price in the letter sent to Alumni was a mistake. As with the above comments, I am stunned. There must be more to this saga….Perhaps Mr. Green of Holly Hobby is planning a sizable contribution to the NMH endowment- say $19.9 million since the asking price was $20 million? $10 million?
I don’t mean to sound cynical- but this just does not make sense to me….. How is the C.S. Lewis Foundation endowment to pay $1million/yr to maintain the facilities after the initial $5 million investment? I see another sale in the future- and it will probably be more lucrative for the seller.
I’ve been completely supportive of the sale of the campus, but this seems insane.
I agree that the sale price was surprising. However, I encourage you all not to confuse “value” with “price.” I am sure NMH could have sold the campus for a whole lot more money (price) to someone who wouldn’t have cared a bit about the heritage of the school, the beauty of the buildings or the legacy of the head, heart and hand. And that buyer would have probably torn down the campus and developed the property or sold it off in bits!
It seems to me that NMH “valued” the campus SO much, that they sold it to someone who would value you it as much as we do, regardless of the price.
Recently, we purchased a home in Northfield at a price that was much lower than the value. However, the sellers told us frankly that they sold it to us at that price because they wanted “us” to have it. I expect that is what happened with this sale. I wish I could personally be in a position to act with such nobility as NMH did in the face of sure critism. Good job NMH!
January 6, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I feel nothing but sorrow and amazement that the Northfield campus would be given away for this ridiculous price. As an old timer from the community and a parent of graduates, I feel that the trustees have made another terrible blunder as they did with the demonstration of the Chateau.
I am hoping that history will prove me wrong.
How can we support the school financially when they misuse our donations?
What price to put upon preserving a very noble tradition in any form? Would you you really rather have the money?? While I am certainly NO financial whiz (hence my paltry past donations, routinely deferred until bequest time), it does seem to me the approximately $3 million dollar sales loss (considering that similar Bradford College sale) may be but a very small price for the preservation, in some form, of this very honorable prep school tradition via the very beautiful Mount Hermon campus (half a loaf is better than NONE!). This is not to mention conserving access rights & privileges, along with several vitally historic properties at the Northfield campus, while expensively assuring renovation of the rest.
Face it: the TWO campuses were far too impractical and expensive to ever maintain for long! Had so very many of us just contributed far MORE, if I only could have, then this might never have happened…
It must be that the paltry up-front sale price certainly reflects the desperation of NMH leaders to get any reasonable deal during a very terrible real estate market (particularly in dealing for a century old, deteriorating prep school camopus).
I should have noted I’m Mount Hermon class of ‘66 (before the merger of the two schools back in 1971). For that I do feel truly now incompetent to comment, considering the very moving emotional pain as felt by those otherwise far more directly here affected, our Northfield “sisters” also commenting here…
It may be of interest to note that C.S. Lewis was a late- comer to Christianity, at age 32, from an atheistic young adulthood fostered by the class-ridden English ‘public’ (read ‘prep’) school tradition, adulterated by ‘atheism’ and vivid class-hierarchies, just as our own times might be said to be all too often now.
Lewis came to his later-blooming religious convictions not through unquestioning “faith,” but rather through a dedicated intellectual rigor which directly considered the question of religion, and ultimately his very capable analytical insights into Christianity. THIS is the very kind of thing we all might hope for from an education grounded in the “Great Books,” not merely just Western, …as now promised by the C.S Lewis Foundation.
We also might consider not just the effect on the C.S. Lewis Foundation, perhaps, of the legacy of D.L Moody and his rather surprisingly non-dogmatic, diverse approach to education in late 19th century New England (especially as eventually embodied within the Northfield Mount Hermon which I knew in the 1960’s). But ALSO the effect on Northfield Mount Hermon’s legacy itself by a new awakening of Christian belief from the sort of intellectual experience that led C.S. Lewis back to Christianity. The effects of this new, neighborly influence on BOTH institutions may now be very salutary to the memory of both Northfield and Moody himself.
Time only will tell…
As a real estate and timberland investor I made significant inquiries to NMH and within the land investment community concerning these properties. The appalling destruction of endowment value could be attributed to two sources: Northfield zoning, and the folks running the show.
Northfield splashed a water conservation district over NMH’s non-core campus lands, which requires a non-appealable site plan review by the planning board. Placing anything in anyone’s view is grounds for denial. The school approach the town to transfer the core campus into a more advantageous zoning category, call 43D, which would open the property to being included in State economic development efforts and use of state money for infrastructure upgrades. The response from the infamous Northfield transition committee was that Northfield would decide which buyers would be considered for such a program. As desperate as NMH’s need was to sell the property, Northfield wanted to be in charge of buyer choice. Impossible zoning and an impossible town deflated the campus to value to near zero.
When I made my inquiries, I was told no prospectus for the timberlands was available. Having spoken with most of the contractors who did the NMH evaluation, I knew that the kind of information any buyer would need was available. I even put together an outline of a prospectus for NMH to use. After four months of phone calls, I was finally granted an audience. Again, looking for basic information (land, lot sizes, timber evaluations, state of the water equipment, etc) the trustees representatives suggested I hire a plane and fly over to get a sense of the place. NMH paid a lot to consultants to evaluate the properties. However potential buyers were never welcome or provided with basic information. Is it any surprise that most buyers walked away.
The water company, houses, and timberlands are all that are left to support the endowment. Rather then managing these assets as an endowment, the rather romantic team seems to have delegated its brains to Mount Grace Land Trust, and is giving the the timberlands away as well (with 15% off the top to Mount Grace). I dearly do hope that after the shocking bargain sale of the core campus, wiser heads on the board of trustees will step forward to begin to manage the endowment in a more business-like fashion, with an eye towards long-term survival of the school.
i’m a bit late weighing in on this, but i’ve been beyond disgusted at how this matter was handled. i don’t remember being surveyed about establishing a possible alumni consortium to buy the property.
a few dozen of us could have pooled our SPARE CHANGE and snapped up this gorgeous acreage. if i had forked up the $100,000, i would have given the chapel — and some of the acreage — to the town of northfield and kept the remainder of the land to develop a 5-star resort/retreat/conference center.
what were y’all thinking?