The University of Michigan has reached an agreement to buy the majority of Concordia University’s campus in Ann Arbor.
U-M will purchase 140 acres from the private Lutheran university for $60 million, subject to U-M Board of Regents approval, environmental review and completion of due diligence, U-M spokesperson Paul Corliss said in an email. The tentative closing date is on or before June 30.
The U-M Board of Regents is set to vote on the purchase at its meeting on May 21.
The property, 4090 Geddes Road, stretches along the Huron River on Ann Arbor’s east side, about 3.5 miles from U-M’s central campus and just west of U.S. 23.
U-M has not decided how it will use the land, but Corliss said the university “will evaluate how the site may support long-term educational, research or health-related priorities consistent with its mission.”
“As one of the world’s leading research universities and health systems, U-M plans decades in advance to ensure it has the space and capacity needed to support evolving academic, research and community needs,” he said.
The potential sale, first reported by Crain’s Detroit Business, follows outreach earlier this year from Concordia representatives who asked U-M to consider acquiring the property and expressed a desire that the campus continue to serve educational purposes, Corliss said.
The sale would allow Concordia University to focus resources on sustaining high-quality academic programs and student experiences while addressing the financial realities facing higher education nationally, Scott Rudie, a spokesperson for the university, said in an email.
Concordia’s Ann Arbor operations and core academic programs will continue at its Plymouth Road campus, he said. That campus is home to Concordia’s graduate healthcare programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant studies and nursing, along with online academic programs, such as an online Lutheran education program.
U-M compared the purchase to other “strategic land acquisitions” it has made in recent years, such as the 2018 acquisition of the Fingerle Hardware property, where U-M relocated Elbel Field and is developing a housing and dining complex, Corliss said. He also cited the university’s 2009 acquisition of Pfizer’s former Ann Arbor research campus, which is now a research complex.
Several Ann Arbor City Council members, though, sponsored a resolution that says they’re concerned because if the sale goes through, it would represent one of more than 90 instances in the past 25 years that U-M has purchased parcels in Ann Arbor, resulting in the annual loss of $2.4 million in city property tax revenue.
The council members — Jon Mallek, Chris Watson, Travis Radina, Mayor Christopher Taylor and Jennifer Cornell — say Ann Arbor City Council has, on multiple occasions, cited the severe deficit of housing in the city. They said the land “does present a significant opportunity to close the housing supply gap.”
The resolution says that if there’s a scenario in which the university and the city could partner on a portion of the land, the city would be open to exploring it. City council is expected to discuss the resolution at its May 18 meeting.
Contact Adrienne Roberts: amroberts@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: University of Michigan to buy most of Concordia’s Ann Arbor campus
Reporting by Adrienne Roberts, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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