Houghton College to sell campus
Large West Seneca site listed at $2.5 million
Houghton College, a Christian school from Allegany County, is putting its entire 36-acre satellite campus in West Seneca up for sale as the school shifts its attention more toward Buffalo.
The heavily wooded, suburban campus, which includes eight buildings totaling 57,000 square feet of residential and commercial space, is listed for sale for $2.5 million. The campus has five townhouses and a 15,800-square-foot conference center with classrooms.
The property is located at 810 Union Road, just south of Seneca Street and Southgate Plaza, and along the southern edge of West Seneca’s business district. Its zoning allows for banquet facilities, adult care, medical uses, church or school expansions, and single or multi-family residential development, as well as some other uses. Any owner also will get $12,000 in annual revenue because a cell phone tower is on the property.
The campus is being marketed by J. R. Militello Realty.
“Given its large size and beautiful natural setting, we are expecting a great deal of interest from the development community,” Jim Militello, president of the firm and lead broker on the sale.
The dollar amount being sought won’t rank this among the priciest deals locally, but the campus is one of the largest properties offered up for sale in recent years in Erie County.
Benderson Development Co. bought the 34-acre former Buffalo Shooting Club in Amherst in 2006, and CB Richard Ellis brokered the sale of 20 acres across from Quaker Crossing in Orchard Park for a Wal-Mart store in late 2007. MJ Peterson Real Estate sold 29.4 acres in Hamburg, and purchased through an affiliate a 20- acre parcel in Clarence from Canisius College in 1996.
The Town of Porter bought 38 acres on Lake Ontario from a subsidiary of Canadi- an auto parts maker Magna International in January 2008, part of a much larger sale by Magna of just under 788 acres in Niagara County, but that was in a much more remote, rural area in the northern part of the county.
What makes this significant, brokers say, is its location in an urban area and the fact that it is already zoned for development.
“I would imagine it would generate a lot of interest,” said Charles Clark, director of brokerage agency services for CBRE. “You don’t come across that number of acres for commercial use.”
Founded in 1883 as a seminary, Houghton College is a four-year Christian liberal arts school that enrolls nearly 1,200 students, most on its main campus in the hamlet of Houghton in Allegany County, about 65 miles southeast of Buffalo.
It expanded closer to Buffalo when the Buffalo Bible Institute gave the West Seneca campus to Houghton in 1969. The school has conducted classes there by satellite link, housed students as they worked in various internships and student-teaching positions in Buffalo, and hosted outside groups, according to a letter from Mullen to alumni posted on the school’s Web site.
Since 1991, the campus has been the primary setting for the Program for Accelerated College Education, or P. A. C. E., a degree program in management for working adults.
But as the college has been developing a strategic plan over the past couple of years, it became clear that its work in the region is more focused in Buffalo, while the West Seneca site needed significant renovation, said Ronald Mahurin, Houghton’s academic dean.
“This is probably something that long-term doesn’t serve the needs of the institution,” he said.
The college will be looking for another site to operate the PACE program. It also hopes to find space in Buffalo, closer to the service projects involving Houghton students.
“The ongoing work of Houghton College in the Buffalo area will continue,” school President Shirley Mullen said in a release.
jepstein@buffnews.com and jrey@buffnews.com
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