Lenders need to be paid, and Hampshire College has run out of time. The quirky liberal arts school in Amherst, which announced this month it would close by the end of the year, said Wednesday it plans to sell its campus “on an expedited timeline” to pay off nearly $25 million in debt.
Jennifer Chrisler, the school’s president, wrote in an email sent to the campus community that she and the board are currently working to resolve the college’s financial obligations as the school winds down its operations.
“I want to say that directly, because you deserve to hear it directly, painful though it may be,” Chrisler wrote. “I know that for so many of us, the physical place is infused with meaning. The farm. The library. The mod you lived in. The studio where you made the thing you are still most proud of. I feel the weight of that.”
A spokesperson for the college declined to comment further. Chrisler wrote the college has retained a broker to pursue the sale, and the board is preparing to review “any and all offers that enable meeting Hampshire’s fiduciary obligations.”
The “Hampshire campus as we know it will not endure in its current form,” she wrote. “It will need to become something different for the College to meet its obligations.”
Located in the pastoral Pioneer Valley, Hampshire College owns 692 acres in Amherst and around 200 acres in Hadley, according to the town of Amherst. The campus is a quick bus ride away from the University of Massachusetts Amherst as well as Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith colleges — collectively known as the Five College Consortium.
One of Hampshire’s primary challenges since it nearly closed in 2019 has been the $25 million in loans it took out in 2010 and 2016. The school borrowed money from financial institutions and a private partner, Chrisler said, adding that the debt is secured by the school’s land.
The school tried without success to refinance the debt for some time in an effort to improve Hampshire’s financial picture. But, Chrisler wrote, “external market forces combined with Hampshire’s declining enrollment trajectory made refinancing impossible.”
In the last two weeks, lenders made clear that they “are prioritizing repayment,” Chrisler wrote. That means Hampshire must “pursue the sale of campus land as the primary means of addressing this debt.”
Hampshire had been in talks about selling some of its holdings to develop a major mixed-use project on land it owns near Atkins Farm Country Market in South Amherst, which the college’s trustees hoped would raise money to help keep the college open. However, progress was stymied over regulations related to wetlands.
Hampshire’s situation is common for residential colleges facing closure, said Larry Ladd, an expert on college finances.
“They’ve run out of cash, and any way to raise cash, so this is what colleges do — they then liquidate," he said.
Still, he said, it’s always hard for everyone near a campus community when a college shuts down and the physical campus goes up for sale, Ladd said.
“It’ll just break your heart,” Ladd said. “All these memories.”
Amherst Town Manager and Hampshire alum Paul Bockelman shared an update on Hampshire’s closure and its potential effects on the community with the Amherst Town Council Monday night.
With the closure, Hampshire will “have to dispose of their property, which includes books they own and farm animals and art and land,” he said. The “town has intense interest in what happens to the land in the future.”
Hampshire is also part of a “cultural village” that includes the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, the Yiddish Book Center, and the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. While these cultural institutions will remain open, the college’s closure raises many questions about how its land will be used and for whose benefit.
He said that the school’s trustees are ultimately responsible for the land sale.
“They also have a larger responsibility, as trustees of Hampshire College, to continue the goals and values of Hampshire College,” Bockelman said.
The town has a regulatory role to play in the sale, he added, and it also has the opportunity to purchase it, though that remains “a major question, financially,” he said.
“What I said to the council is, ‘We have to tell you what your options are,’” he said.
Hampshire alum Jonathon Podolsky said in an email that more than 1,000 alumni and other stakeholders have come together via Zoom, Discord, and WhatsApp in recent weeks “to grapple with the news from campus and to envision a Hampshire 3.0. and how to help the campus community.”
He said the group would “make a final emergency effort to raise funds to pay off Hampshire’s debts in conjunction with 3.0 plan that carries forward some aspects of Hampshire’s ethos and values on campus.”
In her message to the community, Chrisler said the school’s closing “cannot undo the fact that the people who worked, studied, and lived here over the decades transformed a bucolic tract of farm land into an experimenting and transformative education community.
“Even in this time of great loss, we should all take pride in what was accomplished here,” she added.
Shannon Larson and Nick Stoico of the Globe staff contributed.
Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser.