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Wells College’s campus and buildings are for sale, but not the defunct educational institution itself, according to a group of alumnae that had hoped to purchase it.
Caolan MacMahon, a co-founder and co-chair of the Cleveland Commission for Wells, says CBRE, the real estate firm that’s marketing the property, recently emailed the group of alumnae that the college’s Board of Trustees “was not interested in selling the entity” that is Wells College.
“From the language, we are assuming that the Board of Trustees wants the college dissolved,” says MacMahon, a 1985 graduate of the college.
CCfW had to sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to bid on Wells, so MacMahon could not reveal the text of the email. No contact information is available for the Board of Trustees and CBRE refused to comment on the sale, citing client confidentiality.
When it received the email, CCfW had already made a multimillion-dollar bid on Wells, hoping to reopen the college in 2026. In response to the missive, the nonprofit submitted a letter of interest expressing its desire to buy the campus alone. With that in hand, it hoped to establish an institution of higher learning on the site eventually.
“We are still interested in acquiring the entity that is Wells, but we will take the campus,” says CCfW co-chair Sara French, a 1990 graduate of Wells. “Our primary interest is in reopening Wells and not letting it die, but that might not be possible.”
The letter is just the latest step for CCfW, which tried to keep Wells open before it sought to buy the college. The nonprofit is named after Wells alumna and onetime trustee Frances Folsom Cleveland, the wife of President Grover Cleveland.
Wells provided a liberal arts education from its founding in 1868 until it closed its doors last June. Falling enrollments and revenues and rising operating expenses led to its decline. The college was in the red for five of the 12 years from 2011 to 2022, and finished that period short a total of $11.1 million. Conditions did not improve, and Board of Trustees chair Marie Chapman Carroll and then-President Jonathan Gibralter abruptly announced on April 29 that the current school year would be the college’s last.
While students who were not ready to graduate scrambled to transfer to other colleges, some alumnae banded together to form CCfW.
“Our purpose was either to save Wells or revive Wells,” MacMahon says.
The 13-member group raised and spent over $90,000 on legal fees in an effort to keep Wells open before its members decided to try to buy the educational institution. Bidding on the college opened on Feb. 20 and closed on March 13. Though neither Wells’ board nor CBRE stated a minimum bid for the college, one news report put its value at $8.5 million. Because Wells College is a nonprofit, state Attorney General Letitia James will have to approve its sale.
Asked how much CCfW bid on Wells, MacMahon would say only that “it definitely was more than $10 million.” The amount was intended to cover the purchase of not just the college’s campus, but its name, records, archives and other elements that made it what it was.
“It was also for the entity of Wells College,” she says.
The bid also was intended to cover the college’s debts. MacMahon says. CCfW has not been able to obtain information from Wells’ board on the institution’s total debt, but a 2023 audit stated that the college was $10.4 million in debt to its endowment that year.
MacMahon says that before receiving CBRE’s email, CCfW was asking Wells graduates and other supporters to pledge money to buy the college. Now that only Wells’ property is for sale, some who wanted to bring the college itself back to life might not financially support an effort to put another institution of higher learning on its site.
“It’s a big ask right now to start a new college,” she says.
CCfW isn’t the only bidder for Wells. Among the other potential buyers are two that have jointly bid on the property. The Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge is a nonprofit educational organization that is not affiliated with any Indigenous nation. Grande Venues is a firm that specializes in historic property development.
Emails to the Hiawatha Institute were not answered, but a news report states that the pair bid $10.7 million for Wells. If they win, they plan to place an Indigenous college and housing for seniors on the site.
Debanjana Dey of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Saunders College of Business says the sale of Wells’ campus could interest nonprofits and developers looking to repurpose it for mixed use, but that bidders who are interested in using it for educational purposes might have an advantage over others.
“Given the deep history and sentiment attached to the college and its surrounding community, I believe that an educational reuse of the building to be most fit and the path of least resistance,” she says.
While Wells’ board examines its bids, CCfW is petitioning James to support its efforts to purchase and revive the college. In addition to describing the nonprofit as “the most appropriate buyer” of Wells’ “endowment, its records, archives and artifacts,” the petition asserts that reopening the college would benefit the nearby village of Aurora and Cayuga County economically. At the end of last week, the change.org petition had 371 signatures.
As Wells’ trustees mull bids for the college, the village of Aurora continues to deal with the financial effects of its closure. Fees Aurora charged to process the college’s waste in its sewage plant brought in $50,000 during the 2023-24 budget year, and were expected to generate another $46,000 in revenue in 2024-25. With that revenue source gone, the residents of the small municipality have to deal with its loss.
“Now you’re going to ask 260 people to pick up the slack,” Mayor Jim Orman says.
Mike Costanza is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
I wanted to interview someone with the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge regarding its bid to buy Wells College, but was unable to reach anyone at the nonprofit. Its website doesn’t list a phone number. Google searches for some of the members of the nonprofit’s board were fruitless, so I sent two emails to it via its “contact” form. I did not receive a response, and did not interpret that in any negative way.
I did not know of the April 7 town hall meeting about the sale of Wells, and by the time it was held the story had already been published. As the sale of the college proceeds, I want to be able to present all aspects of it to the Rochester Beacon’s readers. I hope someone from the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge will contact me at [email protected].
Greetings and thanks to each other as people
I am a board member of HIIK and have not received any questions or comments from anyone from the Rochester Beacon in regards to the proposed acquisition of Wells College. As far as our other board members are concerned, they also have not been in contact with the Rochester Beacon. This I know as we are attempting to keep our intent clearly above board and have been in contact with other interested parties.
We are a very close contact group, NO political affiliations are expressed but we do work with the interested parties and accept their comments and recommendations as they are presented. We have been doing our due diligence and have responded in short order to all of the demands by the Wells BoT in regards to the acquisition of the former campus.
Had the Rochester Beacon attended the April 7th community meeting which was open to all, they would have had the opportunity to meet and greet the 2 representatives from HIIK. It has always been our intent to remain open to the press and other interested organizations within the confines of the Law.
We have been working to dispel the “rumors” and other false information being presented by the press when they themselves do not publish accurate information. It is our intent to be good neighbors to the surrounding communities when we acquire the property. Please refrain from posting false news.
As an Aurora resident who attended the meeting on the 7th, I can attest to the Hiawatha Institute’s willingness to communicate and listen.
Thank you Les Lo Bough
I am not aware that you contacted Hiawatha Institute for comments, nor am I aware that we declined comments. Who did you contact and when? It is not our policy to decline comments to news organizations. I have previously spoken to various news reporters and I understood one such reporter was from your organization. Our policy is for outreach into the community. For instance, on Monday the 7th I spent well over an hour at a town hall type meeting, open to the public, discussing and answering numerous questions about the broad inclusive vision of the Hiawatha Institute to revitalize the Wells Campus and more fully integrate it into the community, the Village of Aurora and Cayagua County. The communities, people, and area are uniquely wonderful and we will restore and revitalize Wells and become part of the fabric of what makes all of that so unique. Wells and the people of Aurora deserve no less.
Thank you,
Les Lo Baugh, Jr. J.D.
Chair & President
Hiawatha Institue for Indigenous Knowledge [email protected]