House on McGoff Hill Gets Pricey Facelift

The future of the house that Lyndon State College purchased on McGoff Hill currently sits in limbo, but the money is nice in the meantime.

The Campus Planning Committee is presently working on some options, such as turning the 10 acre lot into campus housing , or moving the maintenance plant to that location and building housing on maintenance's current site.

"The committee would be looking at all those alternatives, coming up with recommendations so that at least when a new president comes on board the thinking and a lot of that leg work would have been completed," said Dean of Administration Wayne Hamilton.

The house is being rented to a family for $950 a month. That money is used to pay for the renovations that were done after the purchase of the house.

"We did some minor improvements to the house," said Hamilton. "There were some fix up things that we did and we hope that the rent will pay for some of those improvements."

The list of renovations: septic system $15,057, insulation - $11, 437, replaced heating system - $10,460, repaired barn roof - $8,237.

The house was appraised at $355,000, but the school paid $335,000.

"The appraisal that was done considered those existing conditions," he said. "We offered a price below that knowing that we had to put some money into it."

One of the fixes came sooner than the school hoped.

"We thought that the septic might get by for a while. It didn't," said Hamilton. "Once the family moved in it was apparent that it wasn't going to work to reasonable standards. We did it sooner as opposed to later."

The school bought the house because of its location and potential as well as what it wanted to avoid.

"When opportunities like this come along you have to take a hard look at them and it is hard to say what would have happened to that property had we not bought it, but if it had been bought and developed for some other use it could have a long term impact on the college and its ability to grow the campus in the future," he said.

LSC wanted to avoid someone buying the land and turning it into one acre building lots, which would give the school neighbors that would be too close for comfort.

"That could have put some constraints on how we used that end of the campus," he said.

Given the current financial situation the school is looking at in the next couple of years, buying the house is still a good thing for LSC.

"We are trying to balance keeping the college moving forward, looking strategically and looking at where the college is going to be not just two years down the road, but 20 years," said Hamilton.