“We all know that this investment not only represents a new goal for this historic campus, but it is a game changer as it relates to the economic growth opportunity and many other things that affect the development of the workforce in this city,” said Birmingham Mayor Randall L. Woodfin in a press conference when the agreement was first announced. “We’re talking about 1,000 jobs and more.”
After two years of uncertainty, the leafy campus will remain as a teaching facility. But other campuses that have closed in recent years have faced very different results. While many have been purchased by private K-12 schools, developers and religious institutions, some remain on the market, in some cases beyond repair as maintenance problems abound on unsupervised campuses. And as pressures mount on colleges amid declining enrollment and economic conditions, experts predict more closings ahead, meaning more communities may find themselves figuring out how to deal with their empty campuses.
Finding a New Purpose
In the past few years, a number of colleges have been closed. Other sites have been acquired by other institutions, such as Concordia University’s Portland campus, which closed in 2020 and was purchased by the University of Oregon in 2022. The site reopened in 2025 as Oregon’s Portland branch campus.
Across the border in California, Soka University announced Monday that it plans to buy the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, a graduate school run by Middlebury College in Vermont, which announced last year that it would close its MIIS programs in 2027.
But many times closed campuses are converted to other uses. Many have been reborn as K–12 schools, which experts note are a good fit because the buildings don’t need renovations and campus owners don’t share the challenge of redesigning the educational space. Some have been turned into houses, breweries and correctional facilities.
Converting colleges to other uses can be fraught with challenges, said Jeffrey Woolf, senior vice president and national leader of realtor CBRE, which has sold many of the campuses. Woolf noted that colleges are not built like modern business parks, which poses difficulties for developers. Another problem is that many buildings do not meet modern utility or safety standards and may contain asbestos and other toxins that need to be removed. Access levels are another common challenge.
Maintenance delays—a growing problem on many campuses across the country—can be especially problematic at colleges where leaders have put off repairs for decades amid financial crises, said Emilio Amendola, president of A&G Real Estate Partners, which is involved in the sale of various campuses—including Cazenovia College earlier this year.
“Everything we’ve worked on has been delayed for some kind of maintenance, whether it’s the roof or the air-conditioning systems or the heaters, or things that may have been natural. We’ve had gyms where the pool was sinking, the roof was leaking, everything,” said Amendola.
Sometimes buyers are put off by campus location.
“These campuses can have huge, residual value, depending on where they are. Some of them can be a real struggle. [to sell]because they are basically in the middle of nowhere, which is probably one of the reasons why they are out of business,” said Woolf.” “It’s like the old real estate adage—location, location, location. That’s true in college real estate, too.”
Zoning can also be a headache, experts note. Colleges are often designed as educational sites with restrictions on other things, meaning developers need to work with places to change that.
But conversion challenges aren’t necessarily the death knell for developing closed campuses.
Amendola pointed to the example of the former Briarcliffe College campus in Patchogue, NY—now Blue Point Brewing Company. He noted that the owners of the brewery faced many challenges, including negotiating with the tenants to vacate and renovating the space to fit the necessary equipment, which required the removal of a large portion of the second floor of the building. But eventually, the site was revitalized and is now the center of downtown Patchogue.
Briarcliffe College was renamed Blue Point Brewing Co.
J. Conrad Williams Jr./Newsday RM/Getty Images
Importantly, Amendola said, the local community was on board with the plan. He mentioned that given the zoning and other challenges, the buy-in of the local community and politicians is important.
“When you get the political situation behind you, it makes it easier,” Amendola said.
Decaying Campuses
Not all closed campuses have a happy second life.
Some are collapsing, attracting vandals and creating chaos in communities. Some sites have been deteriorating for years, neglected or neglected by distant owners.
In late 2016, a Chinese company known as US Magis International Education Center purchased Virginia Intermont College for $3.3 million after the Bristol, Va., facility sat vacant for two years following its closure. Representatives of the new owners told the media that they intend to open a college, but nearly a decade later, that effort has not materialized. During that time, the area was heavily damaged and many buildings burned in the 2024 fire.
(A lawyer representing the owner did not respond to a request for comment.)
Many buildings at Virginia Intermont College burned to the ground in 2024.
The city of Bristol launched an effort to seize the vacant Virginia Intermont site for unpaid back taxes by 2025; the estranged owner then paid his $605,000 fee, blocking the municipality’s foreclosure attempt.
Mack Smith, Bristol’s economic development manager, said Within Higher Ed via email that many problems still plague the campus. Although the burnt buildings have been demolished, the debris is still there and is crowded, despite the owners promising to fix it.
“We’ve been told a lot of things, but at some point we need to start seeing progress,” Smith wrote.
Officials in Nashua, NH, are facing a similar challenge.
In 2017, Xinhua Education Consulting Services Corporation, a Chinese company, purchased the closed campus of Daniel Webster College in Nashua for $11.6 million. The new owners later told local officials they thought they were buying a working college.
Although the new owners have had more time to pay their taxes than their counterparts at the Virginia Intermont campus, city officials note that at least part of the site is deteriorating.
Liz Hannum, Nashua’s economic development director, said Within Higher Ed that some buildings are “unfit and unusable” and the city has heard complaints from neighbors. But other parts of the facility are operational and are rented out by a company that makes unmanned aerial vehicles and a hockey school that houses students in dormitories. (He thanked those companies for maintaining the leased parts of the campus.)
Portions of Daniel Webster’s campus are for rent.
Even though the future of the area is unknown, Nashua officials have been busy.
Last year — after lawmakers passed a bill barring Chinese from buying property in New Hampshire — the city sought federal funding to buy the site. Officials argued that buying the campus would ease concerns about foreign ownership and allow the city to use the property more profitably. But legislators voted in line with the party and a majority of Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee rejected a $20 million grant for Nashua to buy the former Daniel Webster College site, putting the proposal as a bailout.
The campus remains important; the redevelopment proposal is in the city’s master plan. Nashua officials plan to continue trying to develop the site despite the delay.
“We will try to support the development privately or look to the next legislative session to get more money,” Hannum said. “We wouldn’t be able to commit to buying it ourselves, because then we’d be responsible for it while we’re trying to get a developer. But if we were to buy it using state funds, I think that would make sense.”
Remembering Closed Colleges
Ryan Allen, professor of comparative and global education and leadership and author of College Towns newsletter, has been all over the country in recent years visiting closed campuses, traveling thousands of miles to get a book he wrote on the subject.
In those miles, Allen has seen both hope and decay in his visits to more than 50 sites.
The landfill at Wells College in Aurora, NY, is overflowing with trash.
He pointed to Oregon’s revitalization of the former Concordia campus in Portland as an example of a campus thriving in its second life. But many of the other campuses he visited remain empty, he said, with local flora and fauna slowly reclaiming vacant lots that are close to abandonment.
“Some of them are left alone, and going to those places is very strange and supernatural,” Allen said. “It’s like walking through the ruins of a lost civilization where, in some cases, I’m the only person on campus or there are very few people there.”
He mentioned that many local people in small college towns lamented the loss of their higher institutions. Beyond the economic and cultural impact, Allen pointed out the role played by colleges in shaping the city’s identity, bringing new faces and serving as a third place, like a park where residents walk their dogs and indulge in the beauty of a well-maintained campus.
While colleges may continue to close, Allen hopes they are not forgotten.
“It’s an important part of American culture. And I think because we’re losing colleges, we’re losing some of that—losing this little college that maybe nobody’s ever heard of, that’s so important. [idea] in the city,” he said, “It makes me sad that it’s suddenly gone. And who will know that the college was there?”
