The campus of the former Green Mountain College is going on the auction block.
The 155-acre Poultney property has already been on the market for about a year. GMC’s leaders closed the four-year liberal arts college in the spring of 2019, saying declining enrollment and debt made the school’s finances untenable.
“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,’” said Thomas Bailey, a college trustee and project manager with Verdolino & Lowey, a Massachusetts accounting firm that oversees the property.
The firm has 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 contemplated in July.
“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,” Bailey said.
Pre-auction offers will be considered, according to a press release from Maltz, which touts the school’s “classic New England dormitory buildings” as well as its 400-seat auditorium, fine arts studios and galleries, working farm, guest residences and campus-wide biomass heating system.
Vermont has seen four colleges shutter in the last two years, and their campuses have proved tough to sell. The only purchase agreement announced thus far – a $4.9 million deal for Southern Vermont College’s main campus in Bennington – fell apart in January.
GMC is still on the hook 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 couldn’t pay what was due this April, and is now 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.
“I wish I had a good answer. I don’t,” he said.
