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Great River School &
Augsburg Academy for Health Careers
St. Paul, Minnesota
www.greatriverschool.org
In spite of support from the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Center for School Change and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, start-up charters, Great River School & Augsburg Academy for Health Careers could not find a facility to meet their needs.
Finally, they identified a former office building for sale in a section of St. Paul which would serve as an ideal site for both schools to co-locate in their start-up years. Since neither school had any operational experience or proven enrollment, they would have not only encountered difficulties in trying to obtain the acquisition and renovation financing necessary to convert the site into school use, but the time to pursue financing and oversee development would have detracted from their primary goals – to develop curriculum and recruit students and staff for the upcoming school year. They turned to CSDC for assistance.
CSDC negotiated an agreement to purchase the 23,500 sq. ft. facility and obtained the necessary $2.425 million to renovate the building and turn it into classroom, administrative offices and multi-purpose space. The financing was provided by Park Midway Bank and non-profits Assistance Fund.
Since then, Great River, the building’s anchor school, has prepared an extensive site development plan and CSDC anticipates selling the property to the school once its enrollment can support the property’s long-term debt financing. (Augsburg Academy moved into its own facility in the summer of 2006.) |
