What happens to the Concordia University campus?

 

For the first time in 115 years, there are no students this fall on the Northeast Portland campus of Concordia University.

The lawns are brown.  Doors locked.  Windows closed and dark.  Parking lots empty.  Athletic field vacant.

A pedestrian walking though these 24 acres absent of humanity can’t help thinking:   “Something is wrong here.”  Indeed.  Was it some kind of high-tech bomb that saved the buildings but wiped out the people?  Nope.  The local board of trustees pulled the plug quickly without notice earlier this year, ending CU’s history at the end of the spring 2020 semester.

 Those looking for answers got nowhere.  Nobody in the official realm was willing to talk; calls were not returned.  There may be layers of reasons for the closure, and we’ll touch on them in a bit.

 Concordia never ranked with Portland’s fanciest colleges such as Reed or Lewis and Clark.  It began in 1905 as a Lutheran Church-related private high school.  It expanded to a junior college in 1950 and to an accredited four-year university in 1977, dropping the high school along the way.

Its strongest programs were educating teachers and nurses.  It competed athletically with small, mostly church-related Pacific Northwest colleges in several sports and toward the end of its life ranked as a national power among small-college women’s soccer programs.

 Unlike many colleges, Concordia worked closely with the surrounding neighborhood.  Student teachers gained experience at Faubion School, just across the street.  Neighborhood residents were welcome to use the library and buy meals at the cafeteria.  Neighborhood teams used the sports fields.

 Your correspondent taught journalism on a part-time basis at Concordia from 2007 to 12.  During that time, the administration decided to make a major push into on-line instruction for teachers.  Graduates of the on-line program would set foot on campus only once – graduation day. 

Many of the 1200 or so undergraduates who lived on campus at the time were leery of the internet-education plans.  They felt that s significant part of the Concordia was participating in campus life.  They feared that a blizzard of on-line degrees might denigrate their on-campus degrees. Closure of the entire institution was never even perceived as a possibility.

The first decade of the century brought impressive changes to the campus, including a grand three-story library, new housing and a mini-stadium with an all-weather surface for soccer and baseball.  The campus definitely was "moving up" in spirit and physical quality.

George H. White Library 

 Admissions jumped dramatically with the on-line education program.  Nevertheless, Concordia apparently fell far behind in payments to a California firm, Hotchalk Inc., which curried and processed applications and “serviced” the on-line students.

 Meanwhile, the university evidently got cross-ways with its parent, the conservative Missouri Lutheran Synod that objected to creation of a resource center for gay, lesbian and transgender students.  (Methinks these devout Christians forgot to have a discussion with Jesus on that one.)

 To whatever extent all these issues merged, there appeared to be no answer locally.  So, boom, plug pulled. University gone.  Litigation with Hotchalk is already pending.

What becomes of the 24-acre campus?  It is for sale by the Lutheran Church Extension Fund, a financial services arm of the Missouri Synod in St. Louis.  It could be a turn-key purchase for a small college, but in this era, small colleges are facing tough times.  The internet as a high-education savior  is a bumpier road than expected.  

Athletic field 

 Could the campus be parted out?  Certainly the dorm rooms and apartments could be sold for housing and could be used immediately.  The gymnasium and athletic field could be a plum for the Portland Parks Bureau.  The new library and the much older administration building and faculty offices could easily resurface as offices. 

The short answer is that nothing will happen quickly.  Changed uses could require slow and costly city land-use zone changes from the current “campus institution” zone.  What happens to the debt on recent campus additions is anybody’s guess.

 Vacancies and delays are never good for any building, old or new.  The longer that time passes, the dimmer the future looks for what’s left of Concordia University.