College Becomes Zillow Gone Wild, Halal Guy Mayor, & More
Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of Nov. 3 - Nov. 9
Note: Around the College Towns is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.
Old College to Zillow Gone Wild
A recent property posted to the r/ZillowGoneWild subreddit seemed to stump the group. The listing was for a 40,500 sq. ft. home with 57 bedrooms, 53 baths, a commercial kitchen on a 29 acre lot. It is a beautiful beautiful place in an ideal location: Cupertino, California (aka home of Apple). Yet the price tag for all of this was set at just $1. What gives? The group was puzzled.
The answer is that the property is a former Catholic seminary and college. Given that I am studying dead and dying colleges, I recognized immediately that the strange price was due to the complications of finding a reuse for these kinds of properties. I have warned in the past that buying an old college campus should not be taken lightly.
Saint Joseph’s seminary had been at the Mountain View-Cupertino-Los Altos, California, location since 1924. It was a training ground for missionaries, and many of the boys went off into the far reaches of the world such as China, Japan, or Kenya. Some of the architecture of the structure takes its distinctions from the brotherhood’s global expeditions, such as its Chinese tower.
Like many seminaries, Saint Joseph’s morphed into a college as the demand for a four-year education increased (it had also been a high school). However, much of the seminary was damaged beyond repair in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Soon after, the order closed the college completely.
The order sold off much of the land to the Open Space trust, which formed into Rancho San Antonio Preserve. Some was sold to private developers, where multi-million dollar single-family homes now sit. The rest was saved to create a retirement community for brothers called the Maryknoll Residence. It’s unclear when exactly this Catholic retirement community closed, but these old dorm facilities are essentially what is being sold in this deal.
The zoning listed under another real estate ad says that “Property is zoned AG within unincorporated Santa Clara County but is pre-annexed into the city of Cupertino.” However, I looked up official maps and it appears to be labeled under “Institutional” use only. The area is also nested in an R-1 neighborhood. There is no commercial zoning in this area.
I mention all of this to illustrate the difficulties in reusing these colleges. Many people in the original Reddit thread were saying someone should turn it into a boutique hotel, spa, or some other luxury use. This is a common sentiment for those who do not follow these issues closely.
Sure, during my field research on dead colleges, I have seen them closed down and turned into luxury condos. But this kind of transformation is rare and location-dependent. More often than not, these places remain some kind of institutional usage, such as another college, school, museum, or religious affiliation.
The former St. Joseph’s site is in one of the most NIMBY states (California) in one of the most NIMBY parts of it (the Bay Area). Zoning fights rage hotter than religious wars here! No way are the residents there going to allow it to be overturned into some kind of business.
Perhaps another educational or religious non-profit could still take it over. But the maintenance and upkeep are likely a massive cost. Further, one part of the old campus was already destroyed by an earthquake, so I am guessing there are still structural concerns lingering.
It is for these reasons that I posit why it is being sold as a single-family residence on Zillow. The old St. Joseph’s site does illustrate the lifecycle of American higher ed: from a seminary, to a college, to a retirement community, to a single family home. All that culture and community… gone.
Links I’m Reading This Week
Education
What do young men do with their time? A lot of video games and internet. I will have more on this development in the future.
Taco Bell University? Not really, the fast food company is just extending its employee tuition credit program because it has been so successful.
Scots College Sydney in Australia replaced an old modernist library with something more traditional. This refurbishment, though, was getting panned online. What do you think about the redesign?
Rice University in Houston announced a $120 million project to connect its various campuses and parts via a walkable corridor. This Gateway Project will also modernize the football stadium.
The new University of Austin (UATX) received a massive $100 donation with the goal of not having to charge tuition nor take government funding. Interesting development that I need to continue to monitor.
With a ban on smartphones, an NYC school is seeing that students are talking more to each other than ever before, at least during lunch. This is a simple solution that we all likely need to embrace in our spaces.
Urbanism-ish
A social media account has gone viral for trying to emphasize pedestrian etiquette. I am somewhat torn on this: I do think people are pretty oblivious when they are walking, but I also think filming strangers for internet glory is more annoying. I am leaning towards this guy is a bad apple.
Indianapolis residents fed up with subpar bus stops have been adding their own benches at a cost of just $40 per unit. It’s wild how often we must turn to tactical urbanism to get simple services.
Remember earlier in the year when everyone was getting excited about the Chinese app Xiaohongshu (aka RedNote)? It seems like the honeymoon is over.
Saudi Arabia’s plan to build a linear city, the so-called The Line, seems to be over. When the mega-project was first announced, it seemed like science fiction. I guess it shall remain in our imaginations… for now.
Japan is looking to invest in a massive fleet of self-driving buses and taxies. See, the AV revolution is not just about Americans and their cars!
West Hollywood is proposing so-called ‘smart public restrooms.’ The US is just terrible at public restrooms, so we have to pretend that making them ‘smart’ is the answer. I will write about our bad bathroom culture in the future.
Closing Time… The Halal Guy is Mayor?!
Almost a year ago I saw a video going viral amongst urbanists about how government bureaucracy was making halal carts too expensive. These beloved vendors were a staple of my diet during graduate school: cheap, delicious, and quick. So I appreciated a local candidate trying solve a small but relatable problem.
I did not realize at the time that the halal guy was not just a local candidate for office, but rather running for mayor of New York City. Fast forward to this past week, and that local candidate has actually been voted as the Mayor of New York City; yes, it was Zohran Mamdani.
As I was watching his campaign grow from afar, I just couldn’t help but think: “wow, that was the halal guy!”
A lot has been made of his election: either Mamdani is the savior or destroyer of New York City. I especially keep hearing how socialism is going to destroy the metropolis. It does make me wonder if people have already forgotten about Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was in office from 2014 to 2022. He had similar political leanings as Mamdani and was also labeled a Marxist.
de Blasio was not a great mayor, but he also didn’t destroy the city. His city-wide universal pre-K program was even a very successful initiative. I think Mamdani should be viewed the same way—the city might get a little worse or a little better. But he is only a mayor, doesn’t do foreign policy, is boxed in by Albany (the state capital), along with the US Federal government.
Yes, Mamdani has roots with the Democratic Socialists, but he was also seemingly the closest thing to a YIMBY candidate of the three major choices. “Mamdani’s diagnosis would make any Free Market Economist sing,” wrote Laura Foote, who writes under 'YIMBY Action’ on Substack. These are important contexts, even if you do not agree with abolishing gifted programs or making buses free. It was the other two major candidates who wanted to get rid of congestion pricing, too!
There is a lot more I could write on this, but I feel like I am already dragging this edition of Around the College Towns. At the very least, I do believe that most people would agree with his view that there is too government bureaucracy over food carts. The city might even get some cheap, delicious, and quick meals again during Mamdani’s tenure through deregulation of permitting.