WINONA, Minn. – In the administrative suites at Winona State there is great relief that the university’s ill-fated attempt to establish a West End satellite campus is over. The last of the university’s West End presence — the gargantuan Lourdes Hall with more than 400 double-occupancy dorm rooms — was sold last week to Cotter Schools. The university’s attorney, Lori Mikl, declined to discuss the sale price even though Cotter had announced its purchase. Cotter, however, didn’t release how much it paid, consistent legally with its status as a non-government owned entity. Under law Winona State’s books supposedly are public documents
Embarrassing WSU saga
As Winona State’s attorney, Mikl said this week that the university hadn’t formally signed off yet and implied there was no legal public-right-to-know. Lourdes had been acquired in 1989 from the defunct College of St. Teresa. It was part of a $5 million deal engineered by Winona State President Darrell Krueger. His vision was an academically elite satellite campus. The concept was never communicated clearly and fell apart. One by one the buildings in the Krueger package were sold for a total of $5 million to the thriving Cotter Schools, which also had relocated elsewhere to the old old St. Teresa campus. In 2021 Winona State finally gave up on Krueger’s “residential college” concept and shut down Lourdes as a dorm and looked for a buyer. The asking price was $3.3 million. At last report, the price had been slashed to $760,000. The university was desperate to unload the property, which was sucking huge sums from the university’s budget for minimal maintenance of infrastructure. It was an institutional embarrassment.