Azhley Rodriguez
Staff Writer
Plans to sell Priory Campus continues to be an ongoing topic of discussion as President Glena Temple says no final decision has been made on whether to sell.
Priory has been part of Dominican’s campus for more than a decade after it was purchased by the Dominican Friars in 2002.
What began as a campus for graduate programs such as the School of Social Work, The Goedert Center, and student housing has become an extra expense that under the contention of its worth in being kept.
“We envisioned it to be our graduate and adult campus to help provide a distinct location and space [for the graduate program],” Temple said. “Things have moved more online, particularly in graduate classes that are less likely to hold face-to-face classes. Our need for the Priory campus has decreased significantly.”
Before the previous president Donna Carroll’s retirement this past spring, a commercial real estate agent was hired to guide the process to see if there was any community interest in Priory.
Temple, who began her presidency in August, made it clear that the process surrounding selling Priory is highly confidential.
“There are parts of the current conversation that are confidential that I can’t share,” Temple said. “I think this has been a multi-year process to get to this point of possibly selling.”
Temple said it has been a “trend” where less and less students chose to live on Priory. In previous years, students have expressed their dissatisfaction in housing at Priory.
In a 2019 article written by Kanoa Ikeda-Flynn, Priory resident Mason Baker said:
“My experience living at priory was poor for multiple reasons, the biggest being how cut off everything is. For example, if you need maintenance to come to fix something, you have to wait for them to come from the main campus, and they can take hours to come help. This happened with the washing machines at Priory, and it took about a week to get them fixed.”
When asked about the upkeep of Aquinas, Temple said, “the facility is older, it needs quite a bit of work. Right now, we have the capacity on main campus to house students, we don’t need the Priory.”
According to Temple, in order to keep Priory open, Dominican has to use funds from its reserves.
“We’re trying to be really good stewards of our assets and exploring if this is one way to do that,” Temple said. “We know finances and upkeep on our campus is challenging.”
Temple and a committee “continue to move forward” with “multiple parties” in the decision, but it will be a lengthy process given the amount of channels decisions need to go through.
“I’d say we’re in discussions with outside parties who might be interested but of course there’s multiple factors,” Temple said. “There’s internal conversations, the Board of Trustees, the sponsor council of Sinsinawa Sisters and the Sinsinawa sisters. So, there’s a number of steps in terms of governance that would have to be followed. Likely this is still a way off in the conversation.”
As of now, programs that were based in Priory such as the Siena Center and the School of Social Work have been moved to the main campus. No plans are in place for the location of the Goedert Center or official plans to sell.
