By Barbara Pash
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A $3 million grant from the state’s Sellinger Grant Program enabled Stevenson University on Tuesday to purchase a 28-acre tract of land to add to its Baltimore County campus.
“The deal presented itself,” Timothy Campbell, executive vice present for financial affairs and CFO of the private, coeducational, four-year higher education institution, said of the purchase of the tract, which is located next to the school’s Owings Mills campus.
The tract, the former Shire Pharmaceuticals property, includes two buildings. Stevenson University paid $10.5 million for the property, and is budgeting an additional $3 million to renovate the buildings for academic use.
The state established the Sellinger Grant Program in 1973 to provide funding to the state’s independent universities and colleges. Campbell said that Stevenson applied for the grant, which, at some point in the future, will come before the Board of Public Works for ultimate approval.
Stevenson University has nearly 3,000 students on its campuses, on Greenspring Avenue and Owings Mills Boulevard.
Plans call for one, 17,500-square foot building to be transformed into the School of Design. The second, much larger building, at 150,000 square feet, will become the School of Sciences. Campbell expects to be finished with renovations and to occupy the buildings by summer of 2013.
Campbell said the purchase of the Shire Pharmacueticals property is not connected to and does not affect Stevenson University’s interest in buying Rosewood Center land, which is owned by the state. The university is seeking to buy several hundred acres of Rosewood Center land adjacent to its Owings Mills campus and has commissioned an environmental study. Campbell said that situation is progressing but would not offer details.
I cannot believe that the state would give this money (even as relatively insignificant as it is) in a time where cuts to public institutions are threatening affordability.