EF Academy pays $17M for Thornwood Conference Center
The operator of an international boarding school on the former Marymount College campus in Tarrytown has closed on its $17 million purchase of the Thornwood Conference Center from a Roman Catholic order of priests selling off its headquarters.
Built by IBM Corp., the property at 582-590 Columbus Ave. includes a class A conference center and an office building that together total about 410,000 square feet of space on a 97-acre parcel. An undeveloped 167-acre tract is being marketed separately from the conference center complex.
The buyer, Efekta IA Inc., is a Boston-based corporate affiliate of EF Academy International Boarding Schools, which operates EF Academy New York in Tarrytown. EF Academy officials have announced they will open in September a satellite campus on the Thornwood site for some 800 U.S. and foreign students pursuing high school-level studies.
The academy business is part of EF Education First Ltd., a private international educational organization founded in 1965 and headquartered in Lucerne, Switzerland.
The closing was announced by CBRE Group Inc., whose Stamford, Conn., office marketed the property and brokered the deal for the seller, Legion of Christ Inc. William V. Cuddy Jr., CBRE executive vice president, and Budd Wiesenberg, vice president, represented the seller.
The Legionaries of Christ, an order of Roman Catholic priests, acquired the Thornwood Conference Center property from IBM in 1996 for $33.7 million. It served as the order”™s headquarters and training seminary. The Legionaries had proposed to build a Roman Catholic liberal arts university on the undeveloped part of the property but abandoned the plan after completing much of a required environmental review of the project.
The Legionaries have suffered financial losses and the organization has been a target of reform by the Vatican since scandalous revelations about the order”™s founder surfaced after his death in 2008. The religious nonprofit also is selling its former retreat center in Mount Kisco.
Cuddy in CBRE”™s announcement said the Thornwood Conference Center “attracted significant interest from a diverse mix of potential buyers.” Its amenities include a full-service cafeteria and dining room, 300-seat auditorium and conference center, dormitory-style rooms, indoor recreation center, tennis courts and jogging trails.
“With the infrastructure in place at the Thornwood Conference Center,” said Wiesenberg at CBRE, “a conversion to an educational use, with boarding for students, was identified early on as ideal for this unique property and we launched a targeted marketing campaign tailored to reach this community.”