Bruce Church has left a new comment on your post "Domino Effect at LSTC When McCormick Seminary Pull...":
Lately, Dr. Jackson has blogged about bad news of McCormick seminary, LSTC and Pacific Lutheran Theo Sem. I thought it was worthy of note that Pacific and LSTC charge the least of all the Lutheran seminaries, about half of what the LCMS Concordia seminaries charge. Naturally, they are in financial straits. Instead of sending their faculties to learn about CG from Fuller, they ought they ought to be sending their admin people to the Concordia seminaries to learn how they charge so much and still have anyone left attending. I think each seminary needs its own Walther-type mythography to get them through the lean times. Concordia Seminary--St. Louis is even paying for the Walther movie to be sent to all LCMS congregations. I'm sure the cash-strapped seminaries will be reading up on their alumni and founding fathers pronto looking for some story to sell, and to make a documentary about. Of course, the Walther story is so long ago, is it even relevant anymore? It's about as distant as, say, President Washington and Benjamin Franklin are to modern Americans:
http://www.scribd.com/bruce_church/
How McCormick got in trouble is through something Dr. Jackson has railed about in the past: a bond issue, issued through the State of Illinois.
Now, if one has to guess which seminary building was extravagantly overbuilt and got the seminary into trouble, which one would it be: a dormitory, a gym, a library, classroom space, or the administration building? You guessed it! The president and staff wanted to work in the lap of luxury so $22 million of the $30 million bond was spent on an airy admin building, and the rest on dormitories where the students are no doubt packed like sardines, and they probably have thin walls one can talk through. The building cost 3.3 times as much per square foot as average office space in the city of Chicago, and 3.8 times as much as in the suburbs.
McCormick built the extravagant building at 5460 S. University Ave in the middle of the joint campus, and now they have to sell it and that will break up the campus and put commercial traffic through the campus, which is probably why both the McCormick and LSTC presidents had to resign. Of course, they aren't selling the dormitories since they actually need those, and they'd only be suitable for low-rent housing anyway, but the admin building was unnecessary space especially in the age of paperless offices.
Here's an article from a trade paper that has the details--a Chicago real estate mag:
http://www.chicagorealestatedaily.com/article/20090617/CRED03/200034441/debt-challenged-hyde-park-seminary-puts-building-on-the-block
Saddled with $30 million in debt from an ambitious real estate program, a Presbyterian seminary in Hyde Park has put its six-year-old administration building on the market.
McCormick Theological Seminary is offering the 42,000-square-foot, three-story building at 5460 S. University Ave. for sale or lease. The property includes a large underground parking garage.
The property cost roughly $22 million to develop in 2003, a sky-high price of $524 a square foot.
The seminary, founded in 1829, financed the construction project and the renovation of two nearby student housing buildings with $30 million in long-term, federal tax-exempt bonds issued through the Illinois Finance Authority.
But now, the bond payments of $1 million a year are a burden for an institution with an $8.2-million budget for the 2009-10 school year.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4621481/Chicago-Office-8-8-08
Pictures of the extravagant administration building:
http://www.ascribehq.com/building-schools/portfolio/1051
Get the McCormick spin on the situation:
http://mccormick.edu/content/financial-faq
New McCormick president:
http://mccormick.edu/news/frank-yamada-elected-mccormicks-tenth-president
Street view of block on which the new building is (up the block on the left):
http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=5460+S.+University+Ave.,+hyde+park&fb=1&gl=us&hnear=0x8808a12005cd0adf:0x3c7e3fa7f48922cb,Beloit,+WI&cid=0,0,14796266492643631019&ei=eM_iTdXMMIautwfuoOWEBw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQnwIwAA
Chicago city office space goes for $158 per foot, and
suburb space goes for $137 a foot:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4621481/Chicago-Office-8-8-08
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GJ - Bruce Church has outdone himself in research this time. I performed a desultory search on these topics and found little more than PR releases.
This shows how much is available on the Net for those who have the skills and make the effort.
McCormick once had some famous liberal Biblical scholars and a tidy fortune behind it in the beginning. This illustrates how self-centered administrators can run anything into the ground. I am not exactly sad. All the mainline denominations (including WELS and Missouri) were debtors to Knapp's double-justification.
The devil is collecting rent on the apostasy he so richly rewarded in the past. One mainline seminary after another is collapsing into a name, a foundation, and fond memories. The Syn Conference seminaries are in exactly the same condition as their fellow mainline schools, for the same reasons.
As 29a reminded me, the former leaders of the LCA (Crumley) and ALC (David Preus) are both sorry they got the ELCA merger going. Now it is too late, using human methods, to turn back the implosion and meltdown.
So 29a asked me, "Will Valleskey and Bivens live to regret what they have done to WELS?"
One does not repent when every single person in the world is justified before birth (first trimester, no less).
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The property cost roughly $22 million to develop in 2003, a sky-high price of $524 a square foot.
The seminary, founded in 1829, financed the construction project and the renovation of two nearby student housing buildings with $30 million in long-term, federal tax-exempt bonds issued through the Illinois Finance Authority.
But now, the bond payments of $1 million a year are a burden for an institution with an $8.2-million budget for the 2009-10 school year.
"We are simply spending a disproportionate and, unfortunately, growing share of our resources on occupancy-related costs," McCormick President Cynthia M. Campbell says in a message on the school's Web site.
Making matters worse, the school's endowment, which provides 70% of its budget, has fallen 30% because of the financial crisis, Ms. Campbell's message says.
McCormick intends to stay in the South Side neighborhood. But to cut expenses, the school is also terminating an agreement with the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago to share the operating costs of a separate, three-wing building at 1100 E. 55th St., which is owned by theLutheran school.
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GJ - Merging the two might have meant McCormick dying with LSTC, the Lutheran side dragging down the Presby side of this marriage. To preserve face, many mainline seminaries have merged into others, until they have four or six in one, with high tuition, endowment funds, posh faculty salaries, and very few students.
