Dive Brief:

• Anna Maria College moved to cancel a bankruptcy auction of its campus and surrounding property on Monday after it received no bids for the entire 260-acre estate that met the college’s minimum terms.
• The private Massachusetts college, which shuttered earlier this year, received three qualified bids for smaller chunks of the property. The institution plans to move forward with one of those for a 2.4-acre parcel.
• Anna Maria filed for bankruptcy in June primarily to facilitate the process of liquidating its assets, including its campus and the undeveloped land surrounding it. In earlier court documents, Anna Maria said the property was worth more than the $17.7 million in secured debt it needs to pay off in bankruptcy.

Dive Insight:

When first proposing a bankruptcy auction for the property, the college did not list a minimum bid price. Instead, the college sought a “good faith” deposit of at least 5% of the bidder’s proposed price and evidence of its ability to finance the transaction, among other terms.

At a September hearing, an attorney for Anna Maria described a “best case scenario” wherein someone offered $42 million for the entirety of the college’s property. The next best case would be a similar figure reached by selling the campus as a "jigsaw puzzle" of parcels — "somebody buying the baseball field, somebody else buying the back undeveloped property, somebody else buying the wetlands that are off to the right," the attorney said.

In all, Anna Maria said this week that it received six bids, three of which met its minimum terms. Of those options, the college only decided to move forward with one for a parcel that had already been through a subdivision process and had no competing bidders. However, Anna Maria specifically planned an auction only for qualified bidders for the full property or competing bids on the same property; thus, the college opted to cancel the auction. 

In August, the sale process faced an objection from a family that lived near the college. Its members said past college leaders had promised them a 2.4-acre plot as a gift, a claim that Anna Maria disputed in court documents. The family withdrew its objection in early October. 

About 50 miles away, another shuttered Massachusetts college announced the sale of its 27-acre main campus on Saturday. Eastern Nazarene College’s transition board said it had reached an agreement to sell the campus and 14 nearby residential properties to a local housing nonprofit. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The sale to a nonprofit affiliate of the Quincy Housing Authority is pending due diligence approval by the Massachusetts attorney general. It comes over two years after Eastern Nazarene announced it would shutter. 

“The Board’s priority throughout this process has been to find a buyer who shares our commitment to ensuring the ENC campus continues to serve the community," David Bowser, chair of the college’s transition board, said in a statement Saturday. "The Quincy Housing Authority is well positioned to meet this goal.” 

Both Eastern Nazarene and Anna Maria faced enrollment challenges and chronic financial troubles prior to closing.