A college just bought its neighbor's campus for the price of a few Manhattan apartments. St. John's University spent three years trying to offload its Staten Island campus, and the buyer turned out to be Wagner College, sitting a quarter-mile down the road.
St. John's stopped teaching at its Grymes Hill campus in stages, winding classes down between 2022 and 2024 as enrollment there fell. The 16.5-acre site went up for sale in 2023, with an asking price near $35 million before the final deal landed around $30 million.
For some scale, that is roughly what a single luxury condo can fetch in Manhattan, except here it buys 16 acres and about ten buildings. Wagner leaned on a bank loan to fund the purchase, while global real estate firm Savills advised St. John's on the sale.
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The two schools already share a backyard, with campuses a quarter-mile apart and students who have used each other's buildings for decades. The site also has deep roots, starting as Notre Dame College, a small women's college from the 1930s, before merging into St. John's University in 1971.
Wagner's president said the deal supports the school's plans to grow, while St. John's said the sale lets it pour money back into its main campus in Queens.
This is a small deal with a big signal, since shrinking colleges are quietly selling off real estate and the buyers are often the schools right next door. For investors, distressed campus property is becoming its own corner of the market, so it pays to watch who buys these sites and what they pay.
The price tag here landed about $5 million below the original ask.
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