Morris Brown scrambles for help; water shut off

Morris Brown College faces another financial indignity early next month: the sale of one of its classroom buildings on Fulton County’s courthouse steps.

A bank representing investors who purchased bonds issued to build Jordan Hall on the Morris Brown campus is foreclosing on the property, saying the school defaulted on a $13.1 million debt dating to 1996. The foreclosure sale is scheduled for Jan. 6, less than a week before the school is supposed to begin its spring semester.

Morris Brown’s ability to resume classes in January already was in doubt since the city of Atlanta cut off water service to the campus last week. The school owes the city about $380,000 and had fallen behind on a plan to pay off the delinquent bills, some of which date to February 2004.

School officials spent Monday trying to arrange $1.5 million in temporary loans to cover the institution’s most critical needs: faculty and staff payroll, utillities and other operating expenses.

Without the money, officials said over the weekend, the 127-year-old college, the only higher education institution in Georgia established by African-Americans, could close for good. And even short-term loans might not enable Morris Brown to get water service restored, unless city officials agree to accept a partial payment for the past-due bills.

Stanley Pritchett, Morris Brown’s acting president, did not respond to telephone messages Monday afternoon. An aide who answered the telephone in his office said Pritchett was in meetings and unavailable.

Rhonda Copenny, a member of the Morris Brown’s board of trustees, said the school won’t know until after Christmas whether it can obtain short-term loans to keep its doors open. “Nothing could be solidified” on Monday, she said, adding that the trustees are “optimistic.”

“It’s not like the school was caught off guard,” she said. “They’ve been working on the big picture a long time, and it’s coming to fruition now — we think.”

The top priority at the moment is getting water service restored, Copenny said. School leaders hope to meet with city officials to work out another payment plan to erase the old bills.

It appears the foreclosure sale will take place unless Morris Brown officials can persuade investors to give them more time to pay the nearly 13-year-old debt, said Gregory Worthy, an Atlanta lawyer for U.S. Bank, which represents the investors.

“They’ve been in default on the bond issue for a good while now,” Worthy said Monday. “The original principal amount of the bonds is due and payable.”

Jordan Hall is one of Morris Brown’s two legacies from the 1996 Olympics. The school’s 15,000-seat Herndon Stadium was the site for Olmpic field hockey, and Jordan Hall was constructed as a modern complement to the historic buildings that dominate the 42-acre campus near the Atlanta University Center. The Fulton County Development Authority arranged the $13.1 million bond issue, but taxpayers have no liability as a result of Morris Brown’s default, Worthy said.

The current crisis is the latest in a series of problems that have threatened Morris Brown’s future. The school lost its accreditation in 2002, and its former president and former financial aid director were convicted in a federal embezzlement case in 2006. Enrollment, once nearly 3,000, dropped as low as 56 in recent years before bouncing back to about 240 this fall.