Burlington College officials are expected to sign a purchase and sale agreement with developer Eric Farrell on Friday, school officials said.
The agreement to sell 25 acres of the financially strapped school’s lakefront property will likely be signed at Friday’s trustees’ meeting, board chairman Yves Bradley said Thursday.
The deal was to have been signed earlier this week but the deadline was extended, interim President Mike Smith said, because lawyers had not had time to work out all the details.
“It’s a long document and we’re just making sure that all the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, some students, faculty, former board members and neighbors are scrambling to find a way to stall the deal and conserve the property rather than build housing there.
Signing a sale agreement is the second step toward closing the deal with Farrell. The developer is set to pay $7.5 million for 25 acres of the lakefront property and several smaller lots on Lakeview Terrace and a nearby parking lot.
The deal calls for Farrell to pay $3.5 million to the college and assume $4 million of debt the college owes the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington.
Farrell plans to build a mix of market-rate, affordable and senior housing on the land, according to a preliminary plan released by Smith. The college would keep seven acres, including the main building and parking lot.
The memorandum of understanding between the College and Farrell provides a 60-day window for land conservation groups to match the $7 million purchase price. That deadline arrives in mid-January.
A group that calls itself Friends of Burlington College has begun meeting to explore ways to preserve the land and/or the college.
Some in the group support the deal because they believe it is the only way to save the college, which is deep in debt. Others oppose the Farrell plan because they want the land preserved.
North End resident and Burlington architect Mannie Lionni, a former Burlington College board member who lives near the school, this week issued a public plea to Farrell for conservation.
Lionni purchased ad space in this week’s edition of Seven Days to publish a letter addressed to Farrell. It urges the developer to join environmentalists who want to preserve the land and renovate the building.
“It’s the wrong project, in the wrong place, at the wrong time,” Lionni’s letter says. If Farrell agrees to preserve the land, Lionni promises to “never again oppose a development project, no matter how inappropriate. Never.”
Lionni Thursday said he has not heard from Farrell in response to the ad and doesn’t expect to. His goal was to show the developer, with whom he has also met privately, that the Burlington community is aware of his message.
“I hope it will lodge in people’s mind in some way,” Lionni said.
Farrell has repeatedly declined requests for comment about this deal.
Lionni has also paid for an attorney, Charlotte Dennett, to investigate various aspects of the legal and financial situation of the college on behalf of the friends group.
The college fell into debt after 2010, when it purchased the 32-acre property from the diocese under former college president Jane Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT. The school failed to realize fundraising and enrollment goals and has been placed on academic probation.
Last week, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger weighed in on the fate of the land, calling for any development on the site to follow recommendations from a 2001 report produced under former mayor Peter Clavelle.
