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Antioch's Sontag-Fels Building, 800 Livermore St. (Submitted photo)
Two Antioch College buildings go up for sale
- Published: September 11, 2023
Antioch College announced last week that it has listed for sale two of its prominent campus buildings — the Sontag-Fels Building, located at 800 Livermore St., and the Charles F. Kettering Building, at 150 E. South College St. — with Yellow Springs realty firm Coldwell Banker Commercial | Heritage.
The announcement follows an Aug. 22 announcement that the college will list some of its land and buildings for lease or sale as part of its Social Enterprise and Enrollment Plan, and to support the college’s “ongoing success and sustainability.” In addition to the Sontag-Fels and Kettering buildings, the college plans to sell or lease West Hall and two parcels on the corner of Livermore and East North College streets, with a total of 16 parcels and 6.65 acres to become available.
A press release received this week added that the sale of the Sontag-Fels and Kettering buildings are part of the college’s “comprehensive plan to meet the needs of its students in a fiscally sound way.”
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Coldwell Banker Heritage realtor Sam Eckenrode and Coldwell Banker Commercial realtor Patrick Williams are leading the effort to sell the properties. Eckenrode is a 1983 alumna of Antioch College and a former member of college faculty and staff and served briefly on the Alumni Board. Williams is also connected to the college through his sister, alumna Cheryl Williams.
Antioch’s Charles F. Kettering Building, 150 E. South College St. (Submitted photo)
President Jane Fernandes is quoted in the release as saying the realtors were chosen because their “values align with [the college’s] work to ‘right-size’ the campus footprint and breathe life back into both properties.”
5 Responses to “Two Antioch College buildings go up for sale”
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Antioch will never learn from the sins of its past.
Selling a few buildings will do nothing to keep it out of financial crisis. The reason why Antioch continues to be in a financial crisis is because it has an outdated curriculum that only focuses on social justice. It has little relevance to skills and competencies employers are looking for in today’s labor market. Parents and families don’t want to pay $48,000 for their kids to go to a socialist indoctrination camp.
The college is run by ineffective woke administrators whose sole mission is to produce socialist activists. No thanks!
If education were retained in the buildings and not the students, it would be cause for concern.
Focus On Enrollments, Not selling Assets
The template for the eventual modest size of the college of 1,600 students in four divisions is a solid configuration. As Antioch has learned, inviting students to stay four years at an experimental college for free is one thing; asking them to open their checkbooks is an entirely different story. The transition between the two is fraught with complexity because the college must demonstrate lift.
The obvious truth is that the college simply cannot cut its way to institutional development. This is the model of many failed Antioch College presidents and trustees. From the little that I’ve seen at various colleges, fundraising models for successful liberal arts colleges require significant analytical complexity to sustain programs and raise endowments.
The primary remedy is a significant increase in new actively engaged trustees. Trustee leadership should be expanded to include more trustees with extensive experience in development who can do more than talk about how Antioch should evolve. If this model is purposely ambitious it could consider a ten-year, $100 million trustee-funded plan for the completion of the college restoration.
People in North Carolina can tell you – your President is a fraud and is going to strip mine every thing that makes your college special and sell it profiteers who don’t care about anything other than making money
My word….”Word-smithing”…on steroids!!! Seriously…when it comes down to selling the un-contaminated buildings to “right size”…Well, it brings new meaning to the phrase “double speak”….(pun sadly intended)….As Roy Orbison so well sang…”It’s OVER!” Part of the demise of this once noble college… was the doings of the Antioch College team per se…in that while it over extended its foot print, (cash hog campuses around the world), very poor financial management, along side outside vastly changing times, that made its business model, obsolete….The needed endowment to sustain, let alone thrive…kept growing faster than any schemes to stay afloat could muster…And so, here we are…at the all candor aside place in time…And, I keep wondering…Are the only ones NOT aware of this, inside the campus grounds? It sure seems so…sadly, very sadly! Is there a “Plan D, E or F afoot? To what sustainable end?