Cazenovia, N.Y. – A group of local investors has completed its purchase of the Cazenovia College campus and is pushing ahead with plans to turn it into a mixed-use community.
The group 9 Fresh bought the campus on Dec. 18 for $9.5 million following a year-long purchasing process.
“We’re really moving into execution now,” said venture capitalist Kate Brodock, who is leading the group.
She said the group is bringing in a development partner, Oughtness Group, an Atlanta-based real estate development, consulting and investment firm, to assist with finding new uses for the buildings. The group is also looking to bring in additional investors, she said.
Oughtness specializes in redeveloping existing communities into mixed-use housing and other uses. Its previous projects include a $650 million redevelopment of Rochester’s Bull’s Head District, a blighted community just west of downtown, into a mixed-income urban neighborhood with 789 housing units, 34,000 square feet of retail space and 60,000 square feet of commercial and workforce training space and a 60,000-square-foot urban agriculture facility.
9 Fresh immediately sold two of the former college’s buildings, Reisman Hall and Sigety Hall on Seminary Street, to Madison County for $1.9 million.
The county plans to demolish Sigety Hall for use as parking and turn Reisman into the new home of the sheriff’s department’s administrative offices and training center and eventually the county’s 911 emergency dispatch center.
9 Fresh also sold the college’s Jephson Campus, consisting of two buildings on Albany Street, to the town of Cazenovia for $1 million for use as the new town office.
The investment group plans to turn the college’s 27-acre main campus in the heart of the village into a mixed-use community.
That section of the campus consists of lecture halls, instructional space, a dining hall, several historical village homes, community spaces and a theater. Plans are to redevelop them into a business, innovation and tech district, various housing options such as senior living, and indoor and outdoor community spaces.
Much of the redevelopment will be internal, with the exterior of the buildings left much as they are, Brodock said.
Plans for the college’s former 240-acre equine education center two miles west of the village include continuing equine activities and adding agriculture, lifestyle and leisure activities.
Adam O’Neill, a local real estate investor and owner of 64 Albany Pub & Grille in Cazenovia, said plans are to reopen the college’s athletic center as a community-access athletic facility “as soon as possible.
The athletic center includes an Olympic-size swimming pool, a gym and weight room, a turf field for lacrosse and soccer, and three tennis courts.
The liberal arts college closed in 2023, citing financial difficulties stemming from a drop in student enrollments. The college traced its roots to 1824, when it was founded as a nonsectarian seminary school.
