In early July, Birmingham-Southern College (BSC) rejected Alabama A&M's "low-ball" offer totaling $65 million, sending A&M packing. Meanwhile, BSC signed a Letter of Intent with Miles College, memorializing the institutions' mutual good faith to enter negotiations and finalize a transaction.
A month later, it appears history is repeating itself. Miles couldn't come up with cash numerous times since the 1970s to acquire BSC's campus, and it seems unable to marshal proper purchasing power now.
Is anyone surprised? Where was Miles College, with its humble $27-million endowment, going to come up with the necessary purchasing power to buy The Hilltop?
On August 6, BSC announced that it is casting a wider (national) net to find a buyer for its 192-acre campus in West Birmingham, partnering with New York-based real estate brokerage firm, Keen-Summit Capital Partners, to market the sale. The sale is marketed as a "rare opportunity to purchase the largest college campus for sale."
The anti-climactic epilogue after a harrowing end times which culminated in BSC ceasing operations May 31 drags on with no foreseeable end in sight. The few salaries BSC was paying to remnant faculty and staff have ceased. Emails have been deleted. BSC’s website, now a relic to a past entity written in the historical retrospect, has seen a demoralizing facelift.
The Hilltop is, finally, totally, conclusively, practically dead in every sense of the word. The beautiful campus, now withering and neglected, its access guarded by security to keep out squatters and vagrants, collects dust in its own grave as it waits for its new fate.
Many believed BSC would have been sold already to either Miles College or Alabama A&M, becoming an HBCU (historically black colleges and universities). Now, however, a speedy sale looks less likely. Bringing in the big guns of a NYC-based brokerage firm to assist with the sale indicates that negotiations with local institutions, if not altogether a failure, have been seriously hindered.
However desirable an Alabamian HBCU would be in West Birmingham, that outcome appears unlikely.
Moreover, it appears improbable The HIlltop will remain a campus of higher educational learning at all. What college or university from another state wants to expand its current system in West Birmingham?
Public state schools will not venture beyond the borders of their own states, so public institutions are off the table. That leaves private institutions. But I simply don't see any elite private college with the requisite purchasing power acquiring a satellite campus in West Birmingham so far from its base of operations. Most schools, if they expand at all, expand intra-regionally.
What we have hoped for all along – for The Hilltop to remain a site of higher education rather than become an unrelated capitalist enterprise – appears to be another betrayed dream doomed to become another waking nightmare for the BSC faithful.
Conner (CR) Hayes is a small business owner based in Nashville, Tennessee. He is a 2017 alum of Birmingham-Southern College and a screenwriter, novelist, and poet. CR Hayes is published in various mediums, including academic articles, journalism, prose, and poetry.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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