By Will Jones
News Editor
Bryan College sold 1,200 acres of timberland in south Florida last month for somewhere “in the ballpark of $800,000,” said Vice President for Advancement Blake Hudson.
Bryan received the land in June 2010 from Holland Ware, one of the largest landowners nationally and an avid supporter of higher education. The timber from the tract provided a yearly income for the school of roughly $70,000 a year. However, the constant maintenance and contracting required to keep the land profitable simply wasn’t worth it, according to Hudson.
“We did take cuttings off the land for the couple of years we had it. Mr. Ware and the man who manages the timberland, Jeff Main, helped us tremendously and helped us find an agent when we needed to sell it,” said Hudson.
According to Vance Berger, vice president of finance, Bryan normally sells donated property immediately.
“When we get gifts, we normally sell them right away. This time, we decided to hang on to it for a couple of years. When it just sits there, it does not do us any good,” said Berger.
“This was the first time we have ever gotten timberland before,” he added. “We have gotten houses before and tried to rent them out. When you rent things out, property value only goes downhill. It is almost always more profitable to sell early, rather than risk depreciation. We are not, after all, a timber company,”
Bryan does not have any specific plans for what to do with the endowment. The money from the sale will go into the general operations fund, according to Berger.
